Books like Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

01

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson · Memoir

Isabel Wilkerson's second book proposes a reframing of American racial hierarchy: rather than thinking of racism primarily as prejudice, she argues that the United States has operated as a caste society, with Black Americans at the bottom of a rigidly maintained hierarchy similar in its structure — though different in its specific mechanisms — to the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany.

02

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Richard Rothstein · History

Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law makes a precise and uncomfortable argument: residential segregation in American cities was not the result of private prejudice or individual choice but of explicit, deliberate government policy at the federal, state, and local levels.

03

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir

Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.

04

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann · History

Charles Mann's 1491 sets out to correct a widespread misconception: that the Americas before Columbus were a mostly empty wilderness populated by small, isolated bands of hunter-gatherers living in gentle harmony with an untouched nature.

05

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Charles C. Mann · History

Where 1491 ends, 1493 begins.

06

1776

David McCullough · History

David McCullough's 1776, published in 2005, covers a single year of the American Revolution — from the winter siege of Boston through Washington's crossing of the Delaware and the surprise victory at Trenton.