American Diaries

No one could have predicted even two years ago that an African American would take the oath of office as president of the United States in January of 2009. For many, the occasion marks the climax to the civil rights movement and the fulfillment of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream that Americans could be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. This collection, with about 400 letters from Americans of all walks of life, is being created to stand as a symbol of this exciting moment in history.

The Harlem Renaissance Time Traveler's Diary is Book 3, a stand-alone novella in The Time Traveler's Diary Series. Be sure to read The Mirror and The Stone of Zozan, Book 1, a prequel story and The Mirror In My Dorm Room (A Time Travel Story) Book 2. West Barrington, a musician from 1926 Harlem, seems to have everything going for him. A job at the most popular nightclub in Harlem, a music career that is taking off, and a girlfriend, Lanna Gold, who's the lead singer of the group Crystal Dream. But when West awakens after falling asleep on the eve of 1927, he realizes that he has been thrown...

Living in the house had its own horrors. Why would the white massa need to go to the fields to satisfy his sick urges for Black flesh when he had several enslaved women living right under his roof? Yes, our slavery was different. We had it worse. Not only were we constantly violated by the massa, but we also felt the sting of the mistress's whip. Her jealousy and malice brought us nothing but pain and torture. We were Black enough to fulfill the twisted desires of countless white perverts, yet light enough for them to suppress their shame.

Robert E. Lee is remembered by history as a tragic figure, stoic and brave but distant and enigmatic. Using dozens of previously unpublished letters as departure points, Pryor produces a stunning personal account of Lee's military ability, his beliefs, and his time, shedding new light on every aspect of the complex and contradictory general's life story.

At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.

Sergei Sputnikoff grew up in the USSR. This is his second book, a sequel to American Diaries 1995, a humorous personal diary about discovering America and learning about Americans. This saga takes us from the old country and across the ocean to America to work as a lifeguard at a summer camp for inner-city youth. From falling in love to visiting a strip club for the first time and traveling to Niagara Falls and California. These are some of the many comical and amusing stories of his discovery of a contrasting culture and new world!

A steamy contemporary romance novel about a forbidden love between plus-size fashion designer, Sophia, and billionaire playboy, Ethan. Sophia has always struggled with her weight and has learned to embrace her curves and love herself. She has built a successful fashion business catering to plus-size women and is proud of her achievements. But when she meets Ethan at a fashion industry event, she is immediately drawn to his charm and good looks. Despite knowing that a relationship between them would be taboo, Sophia can't resist her feelings for Ethan.

Mita "Sweet Lips" Cruz never had much chance to enjoy her youth because of her drug-addicted mother’s attraction to lowlife men. After she survives a vicious assault at the hands of her stepfather on her 14th birthday, Mita desperately searches for the meaning of unconditional love in the streets of North Philadelphia. When she discovers that she is carrying the child of her rapist, it’s too much for her damaged soul to bear. With an ugly future ahead of her, Mita puts the newborn up for adoption, vowing to seek revenge for the violations against her.

Published in their entirety, Sylvia Plath's journals provide an intimate portrait of the writer who was to produce in the last seven months of her life some of the most extraordinary poems of the 20th century. Faithfully transcribed from the 23 journals and journal fragments owned by Smith College, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath includes two journals that Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, unsealed just before his death in 1998.

Each day during his presidency, Jimmy Carter made several entries in a private diary. He offered unvarnished assessments of cabinet members, congressmen, and foreign leaders; he narrated the progress of secret negotiations such as those that led to the Camp David Accords. When his four-year term came to an end in early 1981, the diary amounted to more than 5,000 pages. But this extraordinary document has never been made public - until now.

All for the Union is the astonishing and eloquent diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, the Union soldier featured in Ken Burns' highly acclaimed PBS television documentary The Civil War. Enlisting as a private in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry, Rhodes fought in every major campaign waged by the Army of the Potomac, from Bull Run to Appomattox. Here, in his own powerfully moving words, Rhodes reveals why he was willing to die to preserve his beloved Union.

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life. Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled Black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.

The Thornton Families were in the Americas before the founding of The United States of America, and throughout history, their sons served honorably in defense of this country. Later, the Thornton families answered the call when the United States joined Europe's war in April 1917. In the spirit of the Founding Fathers, Elmer Ray Thornton enlisted in The New York State National Guard, the 10th New York, which later became The 51st Pioneer Infantry Regiment. Elmer kept a diary of his experiences from when he left home on May 28, 1918, until he returned home on July 15, 1919. As a young man ...

A stunning collection of fiction, diary entries, screenplays, and scripts by the brilliant African American artist and filmmaker.

After her mother's tragic death, Shayla is left to navigate her teenage years with little help from her neglectful, playboy father. Used and abused by the adults around her, Shayla makes some risky choices, taking a job as a waitress in one of Harlem's top strip clubs before she's even of legal age. She makes ends meet by running scams on unsuspecting patrons, but her luck soon runs out when she is raped and left for dead one night after work.

I think my best friend just proposed to me . . . am I tripping? How could he remember, he can't be serious. A pact that we made when we were only teenagers couldn't still ring true . . . could it? I promised my best friend that we would get married if we were both thirty-five and still single. At the time, I was a teenager and believed that I would be married long before that age. But I was wrong. So very wrong. I'll be thirty-five on my next birthday and still single.

Powerful, haunting, and unforgettable, this remarkable gathering of original documents, including never-before-published letters and papers, creates a day-by-day eyewitness account of the monumental collision at Gettysburg, in the words of the commanders, soldiers, politicians, and civilians from both the North and the South who experienced firsthand the changing course of the Civil War. New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian and author Allen C. Guelzo delivers an invaluable and sobering firsthand perspective of the Civil War’s turning point.

Author RWK Clark, unleashed a teenage outcast with revenge against her classmates. ZD1 is a fun timeless coming-of-age fantasy as only he could envision it. While most high school juniors are worried about acne, grades, and dating, Mavis Harvey has a host of issues to deal with, like her appetite for human flesh. Revel in a new phase of RWK Clark's writing career that is yielding his most imaginative, and bestselling work yet, a must-read epic saga.

A singular achievement, Ordinary Notes explores profound questions about loss and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. In a series of 248 notes that gather meaning as we hear them, Christina Sharpe skillfully weaves artifacts from the past—public ones alongside others that are poignantly personal—with present realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence. The themes and tones that echo through this book always attend, with exquisite care, to the ordinary-extraordinary dimensions of Black life.

A deeply private man, shut off even to those who worked closely with him, Abraham Lincoln often captured “his best thoughts", as he called them, in short notes to himself. He would work out his personal stances on the biggest issues of the day, never expecting anyone to see these pieces of writing, which he’d then keep close at hand, in desk drawers and even in his top hat. The profound importance of these notes has been overlooked, because the originals are scattered across several different archives and have never before been brought together and examined as a coherent whole.