The Fire Next Time

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Jesse Martin
Length: 2 hours 25 minutes
Abridged: No

At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with his eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our... Read More »

The End of Policing

By: Alex S. Vitale
Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
Length: 8 hours 17 minutes
Abridged: No

Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression. Among activists, journalists, and politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce results, either alone or in... Read More »

Racism

By: Ali Rattansi
Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
Length: 5 hours 47 minutes
Abridged: No

From subtle discrimination in everyday life and scandals in politics, to incidents like lynchings in the American South, cultural imperialism, and 'ethnic cleansing', racism exists in many different forms, in almost every facet of society. But what actually is race? How has racism come to be so firmly established? Why do so few people actually... Read More »

Heavy

By: Kiese Laymon
Length: 6 hours 17 minutes
Abridged: No

*Named a Best Book of 2018 by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, Library Journal (Biography/Memoirs), The Washington Post (Nonfiction), Southern Living (Southern), Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Critics*

In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir—winner of... Read More »

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

By: Maya Angelou
Narrated by: Maya Angelou
Length: 10 hours 10 minutes
Abridged: No

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute... Read More »

The New Jim Crow

By: Michelle Alexander
Narrated by: Karen Chilton
Length: 13 hours 15 minutes
Abridged: No

Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexanders The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of... Read More »

When Affirmative Action Was White

By: Ira Katznelson
Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
Length: 8 hours 20 minutes
Abridged: No

In this "penetrating new analysis" (New York Times Book Review) Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of twentieth-century American history and demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. Through mechanisms designed by... Read More »

How We Fight For Our Lives

By: Saeed Jones
Length: 5 hours 34 minutes
Abridged: No

From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives—winner of the Kirkus Prize and the Stonewall Book Award—is a “moving, bracingly honest memoir” (The New York Times Book Review) written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power.

One of the best books of the year as selected by The New York Times; The Washington Post; NPR; Time; The... Read More »

The Warmth of Other Suns

By: Isabel Wilkerson
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 22 hours 40 minutes
Abridged: No

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER
LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE... Read More »

Locking Up Our Own

By: James Forman, Jr.
Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
Length: 8 hours 39 minutes
Abridged: No

n original and consequential argument about race, crime, and the law Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics-and their impact on people of color-are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done. But what if we only know half the story? In Locking... Read More »

We Were Eight Years in Power

By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Narrated by: Beresford Bennett
Length: 13 hours 37 minutes
Abridged: No

In this “urgently relevant”* collection featuring the landmark essay “The Case for Reparations,” the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath”*—including the election of Donald Trump.

New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book... Read More »

Men We Reaped

By: Jesmyn Ward
Narrated by: Cherise Boothe
Length: 8 hours 42 minutes
Abridged: No

"We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped." --Harriet Tubman"In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life--to drugs, accidents, suicide,... Read More »

Native Son

By: Richard Wright
Narrated by: Peter Francis James
Length: 17 hours 45 minutes
Abridged: No

Now an HBO Film!

“If one had to identify the single most influential shaping force in modern Black literary history, one would probably have to point to Wright and the publication of Native Son.” – Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was... Read More »

Charged

By: Emily Bazelon
Length: 13 hours 1 minute
Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned journalist and legal commentator exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America’s mass incarceration crisis—and charts a way out.

“An important, thoughtful, and thorough examination of criminal justice in America that speaks directly to how we reduce mass incarceration.”—Bryan... Read More »

Pushout

By: Monique W. Morris
Narrated by: Kristyl Dawn Tift
Length: 8 hours 54 minutes
Abridged: No

Fifteen-year-old Diamond stopped going to school the day she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school. Just... Read More »