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A Piece of Mine Stories by J. California Cooper

The extraordinary debut short story collection from the award-winning author of Family and Life is Short But Wide.

The Silver Spade by Whitney Bolton

The story of Conrad Hilton and how the Hilton chain was started is an inspiring story for the ages.

Loose Woman: Poems by Sandra Cisneros

A candid, sexy and wonderfully mood-strewn collection of poetry that celebrates the female aspects of love, from the reflective to the overtly erotic.  From the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.

Family by J. California Cooper

In this wise, beguiling, and beautiful novel set in the era of the Civil War, award-winning playwright and author J. California Cooper paints a haunting portrait of a woman named Always and four generations of her African-American family.

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Discover the life-changing memoir that has inspired millions of readers through the Academy Award®–winning actor’s unflinching honesty, unconventional wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.

Between Two Worlds by Américo Paredes

This landmark collection is a life's work in poetry by the famous folklorist, novelist, and mentor of at least two generations of Chicano scholars and writers.  Comprised of a selection of Paredes' poems from the 1930s and 1940s, some of which were published in Texas newspapers, the poetry has both historical and literary merit.

Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen

In this groundbreaking work, sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the classic bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America.  In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of "sundown towns"―almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks weren't welcome―that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South.

The DeShaney Case: Child Abuse, Family Rights, and the Dilemma of State Intervention by Lynne Curry

Curry brings to light details that have been ignored or neglected and covers both the criminal and civil proceedings to retell a story that still shocks.  Drawing on legal briefs and social work case files, she reviews the legal machinations of the state and includes personal stories of key actors: family members, social workers, police officers, child advocates, and opposing attorneys.  She then clearly analyzes the majority and dissenting opinions from the Court, as well as reactions from the court of public opinion.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero.  Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous – it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.

Santa Claus Bank Robbery: A Ture Crime Saga in Texas by Tui Snider

Think you know all about the Santa Claus Bank Robbery in Cisco, Texas? Think again!  Marshall Ratliff thought robbing a bank dressed like Santa at Christmastime would be easy. He didn't expect the citizens of Cisco to come at him with guns blazing! But in 1927, a $5000 bounty was offered to any citizen who killed a bandit while the crime was in progress. Tui Snider's new book follows the true-crime action from this wild shootout with vigilantes to its tragic conclusion.

he Lake on Fire by Rosellen Brown

The Lake on Fire is an epic narrative that begins among 19th century Jewish immigrants on a failing Wisconsin farm.  Dazzled by lore of the American dream, Chaya and her strange, brilliant, young brother Asher stow away to Chicago; what they discover there, however, is a Gilded Age as empty a façade as the beautiful Columbian Exposition luring thousands to Lake Michigan’s shore.  The pair scrapes together a meager living―Chaya in a cigar factory; Asher, roaming the city and stealing books and jewelry to share with the poor, until they find different paths of escape.  An examination of family, love, and revolution, this profound tale resonates eerily with today’s current events and tumultuous social landscape.  The Lake on Fire is robust, gleaming, and grimy all at once, proving that celebrated author Rosellen Brown is back with a story as luminous as ever.

A Texas-Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border by Américo Paredes

The folksongs of Texas’s Mexican population pulsate with the lives of folk heroes, gringos, smugglers, generals, jailbirds, and beautiful women. In his cancionero, or songbook, Américo Paredes presents sixty-six of these songs in bilingual text―along with their music, notes on tempo and performance, and discography. Manuel Peña’s new foreword situates these songs within the main currents of Mexican American music.

Victoriana: Arts, Letters, and Curiosities of the Nineteenth Century by Nick Louras

The reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901 coincided with an unprecedented flourishing of invention, industry, and creativity within her realm.  This volume offers a general introduction to the arts and letters of nineteenth century Britain with authoritative analysis.  Historian Nick Louras describes a civilization involved in a process of renewal, whereby historical forms and traditions were drawn into a culture of innovation, to create a society that was both rooted and forward-looking, traditional and vital.  He examines the influence of Charles Dickens, the Pre-Raphaelites, Lord Tennyson, John Ruskin, Thomas De Quincey, and the Queen herself to reconstruct that society for the reader.

You Got Anything Stronger?: by Gabrielle Union

A lot has changed in four years—I became a mom and I’m raising two amazing girls. My husband retired. My career has expanded so that I have the opportunity to lift up other voices that need to be heard. But the world has also shown us that we have a lot we still have to fight for—as women, as black women, as mothers, as aging women, as human beings, as friends. In You Got Anything Stronger?, I show you how this ever-changing life presents challenges, even as it gives me moments of pure joy. I take you on a girl’s night at Chateau Marmont, and I also talk to Isis, my character from Bring It On. For the first time, I truly open up about my surrogacy journey and the birth of Kaavia James Union Wade. And I take on racist institutions and practices in the entertainment industry, asking for equality and real accountability.

Child Abuse: Prevention Through Understanding: Physical, Sexual, Emotional Abuse, Neglect and Domestic Violence by Evin M. Daly

Child Abuse:  Prevention through understanding is the definitive guide to understanding every facet of child abuse—physical, emotional, and sexual; and neglect.  Providing an in-depth look at each type of abuse, including descriptions of often-unrecognized signs, illustrations that clarify complex concepts, and a comprehensive glossary of terms, Child Abuse:  Prevention through understanding offers a must-read, essential guide for parents, child caregivers, teachers, students, law enforcement, volunteers, caseworkers, first responders—anyone who has contact with children.

Understanding Cemetery Symbols: A Field Guide for Historic Graveyards by Tui Snider

Find out:  Why garden cemeteries were America’s first public parks; The difference between a cemetery and a graveyard; How the skull and crossbones evolved into cherubs; Why symbols matter Learn about:  The different types of American cemeteries; The history of grave robbing; The symbolic meaning of coins, stones, and seashells at grave sites; Common Latin phrases on headstones Identify:  Saints, angels, and other cemetery statuary; Symbols for secret societies and clubs; Different types of crosses; Common cemetery architecture styles; The symbolic meaning of plants, flowers, and trees; Different types of headstone styles, monuments, and mausoleums

Street Games by Rosellen Brown

"All the stories in this remarkable cycle of stories are assigned an address.  Each is also a separate life, yet part of the larger life that a neighborhood is; [this book] is an artist's inhabiting of other lives out of love, compassion, anger, and pain.  Like the neighborhood, the stories are various.  The mother of a damaged child tells us, 'I know how he dreams me. I know because I dream his dreams.'  A male bureaucrat laments, 'I am too bored to move.  No man can leave his wife for reasons like these....'  In these stories, Rosellen Brown is Anglo, Puerto Rican, African American, Caucasian, male, female, parent, child.  That is the artist's responsibility, the being of so many.  Furthermore, it is a brilliantly written book that, in a period of fiction sniffing and snorting at itself, reminds us how the first rate will not go away."―from the foreword by Frederick Busch

Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions by Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum

Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum bring together an all-star cast of contributors to explore the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it.  Addressing ethical questions about ownership, protection against unjustified suffering, and the ability of animals to make their own choices free from human control, the authors offer numerous different perspectives on animal rights and animal welfare.  They show that whatever one's ultimate conclusions, the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals is being fundamentally rethought.  This book offers a state-of-the-art treatment of that rethinking.

Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic

Since the publication of the first edition of Critical Race Theory in 2001, the United States has lived through two economic downturns, an outbreak of terrorism, and the onset of an epidemic of hate directed against immigrants, especially undocumented Latinos and Middle Eastern people.  On a more hopeful note, the country elected and re-elected its first black president and has witnessed the impressive advance of gay rights.  As a field, critical race theory has taken note of all these developments, and this primer does so as well.  It not only covers a range of emerging new topics and events, it also addresses the rise of a fierce wave of criticism from right-wing websites, think tanks, and foundations, some of which insist that America is now colorblind and has little use for racial analysis and study.  Critical Race Theory is essential for understanding developments in this burgeoning field, which has spread to other disciplines and countries.  The new edition also covers the ways in which other societies and disciplines adapt its teachings and, for readers wanting to advance a progressive race agenda, includes new questions for discussion, aimed at outlining practical steps to achieve this objective.

Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty by Maurice Chammah

In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution.  The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier.  When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment.  Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty’s decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction.

Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now by Evan Osnos

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been called both the luckiest man and the unluckiest—fortunate to have sustained a fifty-year political career that reached the White House, but also marked by deep personal losses and disappointments that he has suffered.  Yet even as Biden’s life has been shaped by drama, it has also been powered by a willingness, rare at the top ranks of politics, to confront his shortcomings, errors, and reversals of fortune.  As he says, “Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.”  His trials have forged in him a deep empathy for others in hardship—an essential quality as he leads America toward recovery and renewal.  This portrayal illuminates Biden’s long and eventful career in the Senate, his eight years as Obama’s vice president, his sojourn in the political wilderness after being passed over for Hillary Clinton in 2016, his decision to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency, and his choice of Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate.

Katrina: A History, 1915 - 2015 by Andy Horowitz

The definitive history of Katrina:  an epic of city-making, revealing how engineers and oil executives, politicians and musicians, and neighbors black and white built New Orleans, then watched it sink under the weight of their competing ambitions.  Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, but the decisions that caused the disaster extend across the twentieth century.  After the city weathered a major hurricane in 1915, its Sewerage and Water Board believed that developers could safely build housing away from the high ground near the Mississippi.  And so New Orleans grew in lowlands that relied on significant government subsidies to stay dry.  When the flawed levee system surrounding the city and its suburbs failed, these were the neighborhoods that were devastated.  The homes that flooded belonged to Louisianans black and white, rich and poor.  Katrina’s flood washed over the twentieth-century city.

Scarlet A: The Ethics, Laws, & Politics of Ordinary Abortion by Katie Watson

Although Roe v. Wade identified abortion as a constitutional right in1973, it still bears stigma--a proverbial scarlet A.  Millions of Americans have participated in or benefited from an abortion, but few want to reveal that they have done so.  Approximately one in five pregnancies in the US ends in abortion.  Why is something so common, which has been legal so long, still a source of shame and secrecy?  Why is it so regularly debated by politicians, and so seldom divulged from friend to friend?  This book explores the personal stigma that prevents many from sharing their abortion experiences with friends and family in private conversation, and the structural stigma that keeps it that way.

In public discussion, both proponents and opponents of abortion's legality tend to focus on extraordinary cases.  This tendency keeps the national debate polarized and contentious, and keeps our focus on the cases that occur the least.  Professor Katie Watson focuses instead on the cases that happen the most, which she calls "ordinary abortion."  Scarlet A gives the reflective reader a more accurate impression of what the majority of American abortion practice really looks like.  It explains how our silence around private experience has distorted public opinion, and how including both ordinary abortion and abortion ethics could make our public exchanges more fruitful.