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Exploring a subject as vast and significant as African American history can be intimidating, and it can be hard to know where to start if you’re not a historian.

Below are my top 5 essential book recommendations for people who would like to begin exploring the subject, complete with my commentary on each book and links to purchase or borrow the book:

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America

Edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

KS Commentary:

This edited volume offers accessible, brief introductions to and meditations on critical chapters in African American history from 1619 to 2019 penned by 90 leading scholars and writers. The book’s brief chapters take the form of historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and polemical writing to construct a dynamic picture of each relevant time period that gives voice to multiple perspectives. These short chapters also allow the reader to consider this history in bite-size chunks, as well as dip in and out of topics and time periods of particular interest with minimal friction. Another noticeable feature of this volume that I have not encountered in other encyclopedic treatments of African American history is its greater attention to questions of gender, sexuality, and queerness. Overall, this volume offers a poetic, engaging entry point into this history and can be consumed as an audiobook (14 hours).

Purchase / Access Links:

Buy at Bookshop.org

Find at Library via WorldCat

To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans

Edited by Robin D.G. Kelley and Earl Lewis

KS Commentary:

Purchase / Access Links:

Buy at Bookshop.org: Volume I and Volume II

Find at Library via WorldCat

Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

By Stephanie Smallwood

KS Commentary:

Purchase / Access Links:

Buy at Bookshop.org

Find at Library via WorldCat

Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880

By W.E.B. DuBois

KS Commentary:

Purchase / Access Links:

Buy at Bookshop.org

Find at Library via WorldCat

We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance

By Kellie Carter Jackson

KS Commentary:

Purchase / Access Links:

Buy at Bookshop.org

Find at Library via WorldCat

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kaitlin Smith is a scholar, transformational educator, and consultant completing a Ph.D at Harvard in History of Science and African American Studies. She helps students, organizations, and everyday people transform through humanistic inquiry and introspection. Learn more at KaitlinSmith.com.