Separate Societies

The hardening of racial lines during the first half of the 20th century eliminated almost all African Americans from white organized sports, forcing black athletes to form their own teams, organizations, and events. This separate sporting culture, explored in the 12 essays included here, comprised much more than athletic competition; these “separate games” provided examples of black enterprise and black self-help and showed the importance of agency and the quest for racial uplift in a country fraught with racialist thinking and discrimination.

The Illuminati dominates any discussion of secret societies. Search the web, spark up a conversation, or search through a library shelf, and soon enough you will encounter their name. They have become an ancient order and a modern sensation at the same time. At once a ubiquitous herald of the new world order and the people who market pop albums, trying to discern the truth about the organization can get lost amid the hail of noise that inevitably follows any mention of their name.

A history of modern South Asia told through five partitions that reshaped it. As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia--India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait--were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known...

From a New York Times bestselling author, the definitive history of the Kerner Commission, whose report on urban unrest reshaped American debates about race and inequality In Separate and Unequal, New York Times bestselling historian Steven M. Gillon offers a revelatory new history of the...

What could humanity build with the time, money, and devotion it gives to religion? Every year, Americans donate over $128 billion to religious organizations. Millions volunteer their Sunday mornings. And in neighborhoods across the country, playgrounds go unbuilt, community centers go unfunded, and people in crisis go without help — because the secular infrastructure was never constructed. Without Gods: How the World Could Be is not another philosophical attack on the existence of God. It is a clear-eyed, evidence-based accounting of what organized religion has cost humanity — in lives,...

Set in New York's exclusive Hamptons seaside resort, The Summer Without You is a gorgeously escapist listen from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Rome Affair, Karen Swan. 'Pure escapism' – Marie Clare Rowena Tipton isn't looking for a new life, just a new adventure, something to...

MURDER IN THE HALLS OF THE SUPREME COURT Tim Lewis is an up and coming young journalist, a protégé of powerful news executive Anthony Merkel and guest host of the award winning program, “Law for Lunch.” When Lewis unwittingly records one of Merkel’s private conversations, he discovers his boss is a secret member of the murderous Society for Human Enlightenment and party to a plot to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Kahn. Kahn’s elimination is planned as a prelude to the kind of slaughter not seen since the holocaust. Lewis is discovered, but saves the recording and runs,...