New This Month: December

Happy December! Browse our new books publishing this month and don’t forget to take advantage of our holiday sale for 40% off + FREE SHIPPING on orders over $75! Use code 01HOLIDAY at checkout.

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Before Busing: A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle by Zebulon Vance Miletsky

“This is a history of Black and white Bostonians in all their variations in ethnicity and national origin that few others, if any, could have written.”—John H. Bracey, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

“This is a significant contribution, which will do much to shift discussion around Black America’s long struggle for civil rights from the South to the North, and to expose how African Americans in the North, particularly urban Boston, used their particular environments, politics, and social conditions to respond to the rapidly changing social and political conditions. It skillfully shows how the community of Black Bostonians unified and built coalitions to define freedom, citizenship and equality.”—Shawn Leigh Alexander, author of An Army of Lions: The Struggle for Civil Rights before the NAACP

A New Kind of Youth: Historically Black High Schools and Southern Student Activism, 1920–1975 by Jon N. Hale

“Using rich archival evidence from across the South to examine youth activists, the schools they attended, and the organizations in which they participated, Jon Hale charts the unfolding of southern Black high school activism over thirty years, uncovering an understudied but crucial cast of characters who helped power the Black freedom struggle.”—Joy Williamson-Lott, author of Jim Crow Campus: Higher Education and the Struggle for a New Southern Social Order

The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South by Michael Ayers Trotti

“In this thorough exploration of the religious and redemptive significance of executions for African Americans, Trotti examines the complicated historical narrative of capital punishment and contemporary debates over the survival of the practice. Interpretive yet backed by excellent statistical support, this book is an essential read for a wide audience of scholars.”—Randolph Roth, author of American Homicide

“Trotti demonstrates how African Americans subverted the didactic component of ‘legal’ executions and transformed an expression of white authority and terror into a potentially redemptive ceremony. A timely contribution to African American, southern, religious, and criminal justice history.”—Jeffrey S. Adler, author of Murder in New Orleans: The Creation of Jim Crow Policing

Agriculture’s Energy: The Trouble with Ethanol in Brazil’s Green Revolution by Thomas D. Rogers

“This urgent, humanist history of Proálcool teaches important lessons about the social implications of collective energy choices in an era of climate crisis. Emphasizing social structures, health issues, and power relations, Rogers demonstrates the great importance of a historical perspective in understanding the complexity of the energy challenges which the world is currently facing.”—Antoine Acker, Geneva Graduate Institute

“Revealing the achievements and the costs of Brazil’s much-touted energy program, Rogers provides insight from multiple, overlapping angles—including economics, energy, agriculture, the environment, labor, politics, health, and, crucially, hunger. The book should appeal to readers in a wide range of historical fields and related disciplines.”—Eve E. Buckley, University of Delaware

Bioethics Reenvisioned: A Path toward Health Justice by  Nancy M. P. King, Gail E. Henderson, Larry R. Churchill

“In this valuable and discussion-provoking contribution to the field, Nancy M. P. King, Gail E. Henderson, and Larry R. Churchill explore the need for bioethics to attend to justice-focused considerations and to work across boundaries of institutions, fields, and disciplines. A pleasure to read.”—Lisa S. Parker, University of Pittsburgh

“What does our current moment have to teach us about bioethics? According to King, Henderson, and Churchill: quite a lot. In this timely exploration, they argue that issues like climate change, infectious disease, and rampant injustice necessitate a shift in how we think about ethics. We would be well advised to listen to them.”—Travis N. Rieder, associate research professor at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics

Drastic Dykes and Accidental Activists: Queer Women in the Urban South by La Shonda Mims

“Keenly researched and well written, Mims’s outstanding book makes an important contribution to the social and cultural histories of southern lesbians and all the identities the words ‘southern’ and ‘lesbians’ entail.”—Stephanie Gilmore, author of Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America

“By putting lesbian communities in Atlanta and Charlotte in conversation, Mims charts new territory in the historiography of the queer South.”—Julia Brock, University of Alabama