A Fever in the Heartland

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois, a towering figure in American intellectual history, delivers a profound and enduring exploration of race and identity at the dawn of the 20th century. Through a collection of essays that blend sociology, history, and poignant personal narrative, Du Bois captures the essence of the African American experience, grappling with the complexities of "double consciousness"—the sense of always seeing oneself through the eyes of others.

Published in 1903, this seminal work challenges prevailing attitudes and confronts the deep-seated injustices of a nation struggling to reconcile its ideals with the realities of segregation and discrimination. Du Bois offers a powerful critique of Booker T. Washington's accommodationist stance, advocating instead for aggressive activism and the pursuit of higher education as essential pathways to Black liberation and empowerment.

From reflections on the haunting beauty of Black spirituals to searing accounts of racial prejudice, The Souls of Black Folk remains a vital and essential read, offering timeless insights into the ongoing struggle for civil rights and the enduring quest for identity and belonging in a divided America.

In the shadow of World War I, America faced a crisis unlike any other. In American Midnight, Adam Hochschild masterfully unveils a startlingly relevant period between the Great War and the Roaring Twenties, when the very foundations of American democracy were threatened. It was an era of rampant injustice: Black churches burned, dissenters imprisoned for private opinions, vigilantes running wild, and the government itself fanning the flames of repression.

Through vivid storytelling, Hochschild introduces us to the forgotten players of this tumultuous time: from Woodrow Wilson and fiery antiwar voices like Kate Richards O’Hare and Emma Goldman, to labor leader Eugene Debs and a young, ambitious J. Edgar Hoover. American Midnight illuminates a dark chapter of lynchings, censorship, and the abuse of conscientious objectors, revealing the toxic currents of racism, nativism, and contempt for the rule of law that echo in our own era. Discover the harrowing, yet ultimately inspiring, stories of those who fought to redeem a fractured nation, and understand how their struggles continue to shape us today.

“One hell of a good read.” — The New York Times “One of the most important books written on the American West in many years.” — True West Magazine From the New York Times bestselling author of The Big Rich and Forget the Alamo comes an epic reconsideration of the time and place that spawned America’s most legendary gunfighters, from Jesse James and Billy the Kid to Butch and Sundance The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas. Texas was born in violence, on two fronts, with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north. The Colt revolver first caught on with the Texas Rangers. Southern dueling culture transformed into something wilder and less organized in the Lone Star State. The collapse of the Confederacy and the presence of a thin veneer of Northern occupiers turned the heat up further. And the explosion in the cattle business after the war took that violence and pumped it out from Texas across the whole of the West. The stampede of longhorn cattle brought with it an assortment of rustlers, hustlers, gamblers, and freelance lawmen who carried a trigger-happy honor culture into a widening gyre, a veritable blood meridian. When the first newspapermen and audiences discovered what good copy this all was, the flywheel of mythmaking started spinning. It’s never stopped. The Gunfighters brilliantly sifts the lies from the truth, giving both elements their due. And the truth is sufficiently wild for any but the most unhinged tastes. All the legendary figures are here, and their escapades are told with great flair—good, bad, and ugly. Like all great stories, this one has a rousing end—as the railroads and the settlers close off the open spaces for good, the last of the breed, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, really do get on a boat for South America, ending their era in a blaze of glory. Burrough knits these histories together into something much deeper and more provocative than simply the sum of its parts. To understand the truth of the Wild West is to understand a crucial dimension of the American story.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Empire of the Summer Moon chronicles the epic forty-year battle for the American West between white settlers and the Comanche Indians, the most formidable tribe in American history. S.C. Gwynne weaves together two captivating narratives: the rise and fall of the Comanches, whose mastery of horsemanship and warfare halted Spanish and French expansion, and the remarkable story of Cynthia Ann Parker, a captured pioneer girl who became a Comanche woman, and her son Quanah, the last and greatest Comanche chief. More than a history of savage warfare, this is a sweeping account of colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo, and the railroads, revealing how the legendary Comanches shaped the destiny of the American West.