A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Abraham Lincoln was president when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions inextricably bound upwith money, power, race, identity, and faith. He was hated and hailed, excoriated and revered. In Lincoln we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. At once familiar...

The harrowing account of a black man, born free in New York State, who was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in 1841. Having no way to contact his family, and fearing for his life if he told the truth, Solomon Northup was sold from plantation to plantation in Louisiana, toiling under cruel masters for twelve years before meeting Samuel Bass, a Canadian who finally put him in touch with his family, and helped start the process to regain his...

Django, a former slave turned hired gun, heads back to the plantation to free his wife, Broomhilda, from the tyrannical plantation owner Calvin Candie, with the help of a German bounty hunter, Dr. King Shultz.

"Sitting in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture is a rough cotton bag, called "Ashley's Sack," embroidered with just a handful of words that evoke a sweeping family story of loss and of love passed down through generations. In 1850s South Carolina, just before nine-year-old Ashley was sold, her mother, Rose, gave her a sack filled with just a few things as a token of her love. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter,...

A biography of the ninteenth-century woman who escaped slavery and helped many other slaves get to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner relates the dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom.

Beloved: On a journey to find freedom, Sethe is confronted by the secrets that have haunted her for years. Then, an old friend from out of her past reenters her life. With his help, Sethe may finally be able to rediscover who she is and regain her lost sense of hope. Their eyes were watching God: A drama set in the 1920s, where free-spirited Janie Crawford's search for happiness leads her through several different marriages, challenging the mores...

When his poor sharecropper father is killed in an accident and leaves the family in debt, twelve-year-old Little Charlie agrees to accompany fearsome plantation overseer Cap'n Buck north in pursuit of people who have stolen from him; Cap'n Buck tells Little Charlie that his father's debt will be cleared when the fugitives are captured, which seems like a good deal until Little Charlie comes face-to-face with the people he is chasing.