In MIGHTY JUSTICE, trailblazing African American civil rights attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree recounts her inspiring life story that speaks movingly and urgently to our racially troubled times. From the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the segregated courtrooms of the nation’s capital; from the male stronghold of the army where she broke gender and color barriers to the pulpits of churches where women had waited for years for the right to minister --- in all these places, Roundtree sought justice. Dovey Roundtree passed away in 2018 at the age of 104. Though her achievements were significant and influential, she remains largely unknown to the American public. This book corrects the historical record.

Jack Callahan is an outsider in his adopted hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. A successful lawyer, he has spent years trying to move in all the right circles. But with his literary mother in a sanitarium, his society marriage on the rocks, and his biggest client --- Raleigh’s family-owned newspaper the Criterion --- facing a hostile takeover, he’s beginning to wonder if it’s really worth it. Step by step, readers are drawn into the “non-secret secrets” of an elite that wields power founded on intricate manners and unsolved crimes. Wall Street raider Victor Broman, Jack’s former client, is hell-bent to acquire the Criterion for shadowy patrons. Eventually, Jack takes counsel from his friend Lowry, a mysterious Native American mystic, who unveils a different path, away from all the right circles.

Thomas Alva Edison’s invention of the first practical incandescent lamp 140 years ago so dazzled the world --- already reeling from his invention of the phonograph and dozens of other revolutionary devices --- that it cast a shadow over his later achievements. In all, this near-deaf genius patented 1,093 inventions --- not including others, such as the X-ray fluoroscope --- that he left unlicensed for the benefit of medicine. One of the achievements of this biography, the first major life of Edison in more than 20 years, is that it portrays the unknown Edison --- the philosopher, the futurist, the chemist, the botanist, the wartime defense adviser, the founder of nearly 250 companies --- as fully as it deconstructs the Edison of mythological memory.

In DREAMS OF EL DORADO, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame --- and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. The West was where riches would reward the miner's persistence, the cattleman's courage, the railroad man's enterprise. But El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East.

Janis Joplin has become a legend known as a brash, impassioned soul doomed by the pain that produced one of the most extraordinary voices in rock history. But in these pages, Holly George-Warren provides a revelatory portrait of a woman who wasn’t all about suffering. Janis was a perfectionist: a passionate, erudite musician who was born with talent but also worked exceptionally hard to develop it. She was a woman who pushed the boundaries of gender and sexuality long before it was socially acceptable. She was a sensitive seeker who wanted to marry and settle down --- but couldn’t, or wouldn’t. She was a Texan who yearned to flee Texas but could never quite get away --- even after becoming a countercultural icon in San Francisco.

"You're not getting older, you're getting better," or so promised the famous 1970s ad --- for women's hair dye. Americans have always had a complicated relationship with aging: embrace it, deny it, defer it --- and women have been on the front lines of the battle, willingly or not. In her lively social history of American women and aging, acclaimed New York Times columnist Gail Collins illustrates the ways in which age is an arbitrary concept that has swung back and forth over the centuries.

Recorded in 1949, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" changed the face of American music. Earl Scruggs' instrumental essentially transformed the folk culture that came before it, while helping to energize bluegrass's entry into the mainstream in the 1960s. The song has become a gateway to bluegrass for musicians and fans alike, as well as a happily inescapable track in film and television. Thomas Goldsmith explores the origins and influence of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" against the backdrop of Scruggs' legendary career. Interviews with Scruggs, his wife Louise, disciple Béla Fleck, and sidemen like Curly Seckler, Mac Wiseman and Jerry Douglas shed light on such topics as Scruggs' musical evolution and his working relationship with Bill Monroe.

Nefertiti Austin shares her story of starting a family through adoption as a single Black woman. In this unflinching account of her parenting journey, Nefertiti examines the history of adoption in the African American community, faces off against stereotypes of single Black moms, and confronts the reality of what it looks like to raise children of color and answer their questions about racism in modern-day America. This great book club read explores social and cultural bias, gives a new perspective on a familiar experience, and sparks meaningful conversations about what it looks like for Black families in white America today.

The Declaration of Independence announced equality as an American ideal, but it took the Civil War and the subsequent adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as American law. The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed all persons due process and equal protection of the law, and equipped black men with the right to vote. In grafting the principle of equality onto the Constitution, these revolutionary changes marked the second founding of the United States. Eric Foner’s history traces the arc of these pivotal amendments from their dramatic origins in pre-Civil War mass meetings of African-American “colored citizens” and in Republican party politics to their virtual nullification in the late 19th century.

Nearly 125 years after his death, the name P.T. Barnum still inspires wonder. Robert Wilson’s biography captures the full genius, infamy and allure of the ebullient showman, who, from birth to death, repeatedly reinvented himself. He learned as a young man how to wow crowds, and built a fortune that placed him among the first millionaires in the United States. He also suffered tragedy, bankruptcy and fires that destroyed his life’s work, yet willed himself to recover and succeed again. As an entertainer, Barnum courted controversy throughout his life --- yet he was also a man of strong convictions, guided in his work not by a desire to deceive, but an eagerness to thrill and bring joy to his audiences.