By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
In his introduction to The Black Book, Bill Cosby called it “a scrapbook…a folk journey of Black America…beautiful, haunting, curious, informative, and human,” and it is as intimate, revealing, heartbreaking, and uplifting as any treasured family album can be.

By Graham Hodges
In early September, 1838, the man who would become Frederick Douglass, the foremost black abolitionist of the nineteenth century, arrived in New York City, well aware that he still faced danger from the “slave catchers” who roamed the streets seeking to kidnap unwary blacks. Through fortuitous circumstance, Frederick Bailey, as he was then called, soon met David Ruggles, the city’s leading black abolitionist—and Frederick Douglass’ first and perhaps most influential professor of radical abolitionism.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
The controversial film Precious, released to great acclaim in November, is still making news. With Mo’Nique’s Golden Globe Awards win for Best Supporting Actress (with Oscar nods expected to follow), and eight NAACP Image Award nominations, the story of a teen abused every which way by both her mother and father provides fertile ground for introspection and discussion.

By George E. Curry
I thought I knew Cornel West, the most public of public intellectuals. But it was not until I read his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud that I realized how much I didn’t know about my friend.

By Lee A. Daniels
In 1865, the North’s victory in the Civil War freed black Americans from slavery.

But it did not free them from cotton.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
It is entirely fitting that Jabari Asim’s debut fiction, A Taste of Honey, is published in this, the year after Change. Everything is different now that the President of the United States is a black man. Everything changes in Asim’s collection of connected short stories, too—not because a leader is on the rise, but because one is shot down.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
Attica Locke has added her name to the list of best black genre fiction with her debut thriller, Black Water Rising, acclaimed by many, from The New York Times to The Seattle Times, and named Booklist Best Debut Crime Novel of 2009.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
Victor LaValle’s third book belongs on your shelf if you enjoy fine literary work from African-American writers. Or if you like to kick back on a wild ride with a fast read. Or if you dig genre fiction.

By Ellen Feldman
In March, 1931, as the Depression was deepening and 200,000 young people under the age of twenty-one were hoboing the country in search of an odd job, or a few scraps of food, or the little bit of fun that was supposed to be the birthright of youth, a group of young black and white men got into a fight on a freight train going from Chattanooga to Memphis, Tennessee, by way of northern Alabama.

No crime in America, let alone a crime never committed, has resulted in as many trials, convictions, reversals, retrials, and Supreme Court decisions, including a seminal 1935 ruling. Collectively, the nine young men spent more than a hundred years in some of the worst jails and prisons in Depression-era America. Only one of them lived to be pardoned.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
Anna In-Between, the seventh book from acclaimed author Elizabeth Nunez, is one of the finest novels published this year. Nunez has made each word choice with the economy of a poet. The result is elegant prose: substantive, meaningful, but never wordy or clunky, just beautifully satisfying and thought-provoking.