In January 2007, Nancy Pelosi was elected the first female Speaker of the House. As she broke through the glass ceiling of the male world of politics, the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives for the first time in... Read More

Ten plays. Ten decades. This is August Wilson’s legacy. Wilson, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, is considered the greatest American playwright of the last half of the twentieth century. In August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century... Read More

To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, the now-classic memoir that has been motivating teachers for nearly two decades, has a new companion with this graphic novel adaptation. Following a foreword by Jonathan Kozol, author of numerous books... Read More

Jeff Smith is perhaps the most accomplished cartoonist and storyteller of his generation, no small praise for an artist whose contemporaries include the likes of Alison Bechdel (Fun Home) and Chris Ware (Acme Library). Smith first gained... Read More

It used to be that families who didn’t fit the usual format—working husband, stay-at-home wife, children who all looked alike—were considered to be a kind of accident that didn’t quite reach accepted standards. Times change,... Read More

Hailed as the dean of African American writers in the 1980s, John Oliver Killens (1916-1987) wrote fiction (novels, short stories, screenplays), nonfiction, and taught at the university level. He moved in the same circles in the 1950s... Read More

The biography genre is an art form in itself. The author must balance hefty research with the storyline. It’s easy for the book to founder. Too heavy on the facts and footnotes? The reader will lose interest. Too chatty? The book loses... Read More

Perhaps, hundreds of years from now, People magazine cover images of Brad and Angelina will be collected in books as beautiful as this one. Maybe a particular image—say, of the couple cooing over their twins—will become an icon,... Read More