Widely believed to be the most extreme incident of white racial violence against African Americans in modern United States history, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre resulted in the destruction of over one thousand black-owned businesses and homes as well as the murder of between fifty and three hundred black residents. Exhaustively researched and critically acclaimed, Scott Ellsworth’s Death in a Promised Land is the definitive account of the Tulsa race riot and its aftermath, in which much of the history of the destruction and violence was covered up. It is the compelling story of racial ideologies, southwestern politics, and incendiary journalism, and of an embattled black community’s struggle to hold onto its land and freedom. More than just the chronicle of one of the nation’s most devastating racial pogroms, this critically acclaimed study of American race relations is, above all, a gripping story of terror and lawlessness, and of courage, heroism, and human perseverance.
The conspiracies that killed Martin Luther King, Jr., began unraveling two days after the Soviet Union ceaced to exist. So begins this scintillating work of fiction that explores the controversial questions that remain 25 years after one of America's most cataclysmic tragedies.
A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLE NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • Slate • Vox • The Economist • Marie Claire In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.
** Chosen by Oprah Daily as one of the Best Books to Pick Up in May 2021 ** 'Fast-paced but nuanced ... impeccably researched ... a much-needed book' The Guardian ''[S]o dystopian and apocalyptic that you can hardly believe what you are reading. ... But the story [it] tells is an essential one, with just a glimmer of hope in it. Because of the work of Ellsworth and many others, America is finally staring this appalling chapter of its history in the face. It's not a pretty sight.' Sunday Times A gripping exploration of the worst single incident of racial violence in American history, timed to coincide with its 100th anniversary. On 31 May 1921, in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a mob of white men and women reduced a prosperous African American community, known as Black Wall Street, to rubble, leaving countless dead and unaccounted for, and thousands of homes and businesses destroyed. But along with the bodies, they buried the secrets of the crime. Scott Ellsworth, a native of Tulsa, became determined to unearth the secrets of his home town. Now, nearly 40 years after his first major historical account of the massacre, Ellsworth returns to the city in search of answers. Along with a prominent African American forensic archaeologist whose family survived the riots, Ellsworth has been tasked with locating and exhuming the mass graves and identifying the victims for the first time. But the investigation is not simply to find graves or bodies - it is a reckoning with one of the darkest chapters of American history. '[A] riveting, painful-to-read account of a mass crime that, to our everlasting shame ... has avoided justice. Ellsworth's book presents us with a clear history of the Tulsa massacre and with that rendering, a chance for atonement ... Readers of this book will fervently hope we take that opportunity.' Washington Post
"Explains how the American middle class ballooned at mid-century until it dominated the nation, showing who benefited and what brought the expansion to an end"--
“A powerful book, a harrowing case study made all the more so by Madigan's skillful, clear-eyed telling of it.” —Adam Nossiter, The New York Times Book Review On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America's most prosperous. 34 square blocks of Tulsa's Greenwood community, known then as the Negro Wall Street of America, were reduced to smoldering rubble. And now, 80 years later, the death toll of what is known as the Tulsa Race Riot is more difficult to pinpoint. Conservative estimates put the number of dead at about 100 (75% of the victims are believed to have been black), but the actual number of casualties could be triple that. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what happened, has recommended that restitution to the historic Greenwood Community would be good public policy and do much to repair the emotional as well as physical scars of this most terrible incident in our shared past. With chilling details, humanity, and the narrative thrust of compelling fiction, The Burning will recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “A deeply reported, deeply personal history of Zionism and Israel that does something few books even attempt: It balances the strength and weakness, the idealism and the brutality, the hope and the horror, that has always been at Zionism’s heart.”—Ezra Klein, The New York Times Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Ari Shavit’s riveting work, now updated with new material, draws on historical documents, interviews, and private diaries and letters, as well as his own family’s story, to create a narrative larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and of profound historical dimension. As he examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, Shavit asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can it survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. Shavit’s analysis of Israeli history provides a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.
A Publishers Weekly Summer Reads Selection “The Colony is one of the most gripping and disturbing true stories I’ve ever come across.” —Douglas Preston An investigation into the November, 2019 killings of nine women and children in Northern Mexico—an event that drew international attention—The Colony examines the strange, little-understood world of a polygamist Mormon outpost. On the morning of November 4, 2019, an unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities—fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the LDS Church and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late nineteenth century. The massacre produced international headlines for weeks, and prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to send in the US Army. In The Colony, bestselling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where the initial, incomplete reporting on the attacks ended, and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan. Their homestead—Colonia LeBaron—is a portal into the past, a place that offers a glimpse of life within a polygamous community on an arid and dangerous frontier in the mid-1800s, though with smartphones and machine guns. Rooting her narrative in written sources as well as interviews with anonymous women from LeBaron itself, Denton unfolds an epic, disturbing tale that spans the first polygamist emigrations to Mexico through the LeBarons’ internal blood feud in the 1970s—started by Ervil LeBaron, known as the “Mormon Manson”—and up to the family’s recent alliance with the NXIVM sex cult, whose now-imprisoned leader, Keith Raniere, may have based his practices on the society he witnessed in Colonia LeBaron. The LeBarons’ tense but peaceful interactions with Sinaloa deteriorated in the years leading up to the ambush. LeBaron patriarchs believed they were deliberately targeted by the cartel. Others suspected that local farmers had carried out the attacks in response to the LeBarons’ seizure of water rights for their massive pecan orchards. As Denton approaches answers to who committed the murders, and why, The Colony transforms into something more than a crime story. A descendant of polygamist Mormons herself, Denton explores what drove so many women over generations to join or remain in a community based on male supremacy and female servitude. Then and now, these women of Zion found themselves in an isolated desert, navigating the often-mysterious complications of plural marriage—and supported, Denton shows, only by one another. A mesmerizing feat of investigative journalism, The Colony doubles as an unforgettable account of sisterhood that can flourish in polygamist communities, against the odds.
A Christian theological interpretation of the border reality is a neglected area of immigration study. The foremost contribution of A Promised Land, A Perilous Journey is its focus on the theological dimension of migration, beginning with the humanity of the immigrant, a child of God and a bearer of his image. The nineteen authors in this collection recognize that one characteristic of globalization is the movement not only of goods and ideas but also of people. The crossing of geographical borders confronts Christians, as well as all citizens, with choices: between national security and human insecurity; between sovereign national rights and human rights; between citizenship and discipleship. Bearing these global dimensions in mind, the essays in this book focus on the particular problems of immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. The contributors to this volume include scholars as well as pastors and lay people involved in immigration aid work. Daniel Groody has also produced a documentary on immigration, "Dying to Live." "A Promised Land, A Perilous Journey offers a rich, interdisciplinary treatment of the subject of migration, showing the human face of contemporary migration as a global phenomenon. The authors explore historical antecedents in Biblical and early church history, the political debates about borders and the right to migrate, and the role of race, ethnicity, and gender in the 'perilous journey' of migrants. This is an indispensable text for all interested in the theology of migration and the ethics of migration policy." --William O'Neill, S.J., Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley "At times saddening, at times inspiring, A Promised Land, A Perilous Journey, brings fresh perspectives to the discussion of immigration. These essays reach beyond the policy debate and the heated emotions of the moment and provide much needed reflection on larger truths." --Roberto Suro, University of Southern California
