In the tumultuous, polarized atmosphere of the 1970s, Henry Kissinger served as the primary architect of American foreign policy. Thomas Schwartz examines his influences, ideas, and calculations in an impressive political biography, Henry Kissinger and American Power.

Simon Balto’s Occupied Territory provides a history of race and policing in Chicago over the course of the 20th century. Balto will speak about the book on October 20 at a virtual event hosted on the Facebook page of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, which awarded him its 2019 National Book Award.

In The Fire Is Upon Us, Nicholas Buccola tells the story of the famous Cambridge Union confrontation between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, revealing both the roots of our current racial dilemmas and the experiences of these two significant intellectuals. Buccola will join a virtual conversation with Terrence Tucker of the University of Memphis on September 24.

In Force and Freedom, historian Kellie Carter Jackson places black abolitionists at the center of the coming of the Civil War. 

In Clinton’s Elections, Michael Nelson provides an in-depth examination of the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections, explaining how they drove the Democratic Party toward the political center and previewed our own era of extreme polarization. Nelson will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on March 15.

In Murder in McComb, Trent Brown revisits the killing of 12-year-old Tina Andrews, investigating both the crime and its larger meaning. Brown will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on February 25.