Bill Andrew Quinn

“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period. Born a slave circa 1818 (slaves weren't told when they were born) on a plantation in Maryland, Douglass taught himself to read and write. This book calmly but dramatically recounts...

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism...

A transparent first-hand account of a Black officer maneuvering through three terrifying yet rewarding decades of policing, all while seeking reform in law enforcement When 16-year-old Keith Merith finds himself pulled over, berated, and degraded by a white police officer, he's outraged. He's done nothing wrong. But the officer has the power, and he doesn't. From that day on, he vows to join a police service and effect change from within. Twelve...

Again and again, Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do you say I am?" It is a question that still demands an answer from each of us today. With deft, insightful, and humorous strokes, award-winning biographer Jared Brock weaves archaeology, biology, psychology, history, and theology to create a portrait of Jesus we've never seen before. Here is a book about all the things we don't think about when we think about Christ: The child refugee who needed...

The recent Hollywood film Hidden Figures presents a portrait of how African-American women shaped the U.S. effort in aerospace during the height of Jim Crow. In Storming the Heavens, Gerald Horne presents the necessary back story to this story and goes further to detail the earlier struggle of African-Americans to gain the right to fly. This struggle involved pioneers like Bessie Coleman, who traveled to World War I era Paris in order to gain piloting...

The author of Among Friends returns with a witty, heartfelt account of his adventures as a full-time traveling storyteller for God. In third grade, we talked about what we wanted to be, when we grew up. I raised my hand and said, "I want to be the pope!" Everyone laughed. But, hey, if you think about it, I'm still in the running. Encountering God is a collection of Father Jim Sichko's tales about what happened after he left his home parish in...

The term "emerging market" refers to a country where incomes are currently low but that is likely to experience rapid growth and increasing economic competitiveness. Identifying emerging markets is important for international development, and for investors they represent intriguing opportunities to reap uncommon gains. Yet many of the characteristics of emerging markets-including demographic shifts, rising educational attainment, and growing urbanization-are...

An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone Percival Everett's The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present...

James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters. Initially, ex-slaves attempted to create an educational...

"What makes you think black people will vote for you? Because the word on the street is, you're a racist." With those blunt words to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, Pastor Darrell Scott began a journey he never expected to take-becoming the future president's most prominent African-American supporter and advisor. Pastor Scott recounts how and why he boarded "the Trump Train," revealing the considerable difficulties he experienced along the...