Richard Allen Audio

Welcome to one of America's most vibrant cities, what Ishmael Reed calls "planet city." He takes us behind the scenes of Oakland's Japanese jazz clubs and black cowboy parades, through its beautiful hills and waterfronts, and into its fascinating history.

The Three Doctors---Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt---discovered early in their friendship that they shared one disturbing trait: as children, they had to navigate life in inner-city Newark without a father's support and guidance.

From the New York Times bestselling and controversial author Shelby Steele comes an illuminating examination of the complex racial issues surrounding presidential candidate Barack Obama.

A world famous basketball player writing about the history of World War II may seem incongruous....

Change in the Weather signals a change in America's mind-set, led by one of our most dynamic new crusaders for stroke victims and their families.

In this icy noir from a master of American fiction, the darkest secrets are the ones we keep hidden from ourselves. With the same erotic force as Killing Johnny Fry but grounded in a far darker vision of human nature, Diablerie is a transfixing new novel from one of our most powerful writers.

From Midnight to Dawn evokes the turmoil and controversies of the time, including the furor over the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," congressional confrontations in Washington…

A cautionary tale, God's Crucible provides a new interpretation of world-altering events whose influence remains as current as today's headlines.

A. R. Bernard, the founder and spiritual leader of the 26,000-member New York Christian Cultural Center, presents an inspiring examination of happiness: what it is, how to find it, and how to keep it.

Do you find it difficult to express how you feel and what you need in your personal relationships?

The clashes between President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney over slavery, secession, and Lincoln's constitutional war powers went to the heart of Lincoln's presidency.

Bishop Jakes brings us a book that celebrates motherhood and promises to be his most intensely personal book yet.

In On the Shoulders of Giants, indomitable basketball star and best-selling author and historian Kareem Abdul-Jabbar invites listeners on an extraordinarily personal journey back to his birthplace.

April 15, 1947, marked the most important opening day in baseball history. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the diamond that afternoon at Ebbets Field, he became the first black man to break into major-league baseball in the twentieth century.

Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape and eventually identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken - but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars.

This is the story of how America awakened to its race problem, of how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see, hear, and learn about the shocking indignities of racial segregation in the South and the brutality used to enforce it.

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves.

Groundbreaking, compelling, and poignant, The Slaves' War delivers an unprecedented vision of the nation's bloodiest conflict, as acclaimed historian Andrew Ward gives us the first narrative of the Civil War told from the perspective of those whose destiny it decided.

W. E. B. Du Bois was the foremost black intellectual of his time. The Souls of Black Folk, his most influential work, is a collection of 14 beautifully written essays, by turns lyrical, historical, and autobiographical. Here, Du Bois records the cruelties of racism, celebrates the strength and pride of black America, and explores the paradoxical "double-consciousness" of African American life.

Uncle Tom's Cabin opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife, Emily Shelby, believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them...

From the acclaimed author of Bound for Canaan comes a major work of American history on the astonishing compromises and alliances involved in making Washington, D.C., the capital of the new nation.

Now, in his most daring act yet, E. Lynn Harris writes the memoir of his life from his childhood in Arkansas as a closeted gay boy through his struggling days...