What We Are Reading Today: American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism

Photo/Supplied
Photo/Supplied
Short Url
Updated 27 September 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism

Photo/Supplied

Author: Keidrick Roy

Though the US has been heralded as a beacon of democracy, many 19th-century Americans viewed their nation through the prism of the Old World. What they saw was a racially stratified country that reflected not the ideals of a modern republic but rather the remnants of feudalism. American Dark Age reveals how defenders of racial hierarchy embraced America’s resemblance to medieval Europe and tells the stories of the abolitionists who exposed it as a glaring blemish on the national conscience.

American Dark Age reveals how the antebellum Black liberal tradition holds vital lessons for us today as hate groups continue to align themselves with fantasies of a medieval past.

Against those seeking to maintain what Frederick Douglass called an “aristocracy of the skin,” Keidrick Roy shows how a group of Black thinkers, including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Hosea Easton, and Harriet Jacobs, challenged the medievalism in their midst—and transformed the nation’s founding liberal tradition.

 


What We Are Reading Today: The Lives of Butterflies

What We Are Reading Today: The Lives of Butterflies
Updated 25 August 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Lives of Butterflies

What We Are Reading Today: The Lives of Butterflies

Authors: David G. James and David J. Lohman

There are more than 15,000 butterfly species in the world, fluttering through a wide variety of habitats. Bright and beautiful, butterflies also have fascinating life histories and play an important role in our planet’s ecosystems. 

“The Lives of Butterflies” showcases the extraordinary range of colors and patterns of the world’s butterflies while exploring their life histories, behavior, habitats and resources, populations, seasonality, defense and natural enemies, and threats and conservation.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Dark Matter’

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Dark Matter’
Updated 24 August 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Dark Matter’

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Dark Matter’

Authors: David J.E. Marsh, David Ellis, and Viraf M. Mehta

This book provides an incisive, self-contained introduction to one of the most intriguing subjects in modern physics, presenting the evidence we have from astrophysics for the existence of dark matter, the theories for what it could be, and the cutting-edge experimental and observational methods for testing them.

It begins with a survey of the astrophysical phenomena, from rotation curves to lensing and cosmological structure formation.

The book explains the constraints on each theory, such as direct detection and indirect astrophysical limits.


What We Are Reading Today: Birds of Belize

Photo/Supplied
Photo/Supplied
Updated 23 August 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Birds of Belize

Photo/Supplied
  • It covers all regularly occurring bird species found in the region and features facing-page plates and text that make field identification easy

Authors: STEVE N. G. HOWELL AND DALE DYER 

Belize is one of the world’s premier birding destinations, home to a marvelous array of tropical birds and beautiful habitats ranging from verdant rain forests and extensive wetlands to rolling pine savannas and the country’s famed barrier reef.

“Birds of Belize” is the essential illustrated pocket guide to this birder’s paradise.

It covers all regularly occurring bird species found in the region and features facing-page plates and text that make field identification easy. 

 


What We Are Reading Today: Feeding Gotham

Photo/Supplied
Photo/Supplied
Updated 23 August 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Feeding Gotham

Photo/Supplied
  • A masterful blend of economic, social, and geographic history, “Feeding Gotham” traces how a highly fragmented geography of food access became a defining and enduring feature of the American city

Author: Gergely Baics

New York City witnessed unparalleled growth in the first half of the 19th century, its population rising from thirty thousand to nearly a million in a matter of decades.

“Feeding Gotham” looks at how America’s first metropolis grappled with the challenge of provisioning its inhabitants. It tells the story of how access to food, once a public good, became a private matter left to free and unregulated markets—and of the profound consequences this had for American living standards and urban development. 

Taking readers from the early republic to the Civil War, Gergely Baics explores the changing dynamics of urban government, market forces, and the built environment that defined New Yorkers’ experiences of supplying their households.

A masterful blend of economic, social, and geographic history, “Feeding Gotham” traces how a highly fragmented geography of food access became a defining and enduring feature of the American city.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Horses by Ludovic Orlando

What We Are Reading Today: Horses by Ludovic Orlando
Updated 21 August 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Horses by Ludovic Orlando

What We Are Reading Today: Horses by Ludovic Orlando