America on Fire

'[A] groundbreaking, deeply researched and profoundly heart-rending account of the origins of our national crisis of police violence against Black America ... America on Fire is more than a brilliant guided tour through our nation's morally ruinous past. It reveals the deep roots of the current movement to reject a system of law enforcement that defines as the problem the very people who continue to seek to liberate themselves from racial oppression.' Peniel E. Joseph, New York Times '[A] trenchant study ... Illustrate[s] the origins and legacies of the rebellions that sprang from police incursions in Black life' Boston Globe 'Hinton's passionate, occasionally gritty approach is the opposite of a gauzy PBS series: she drills down into the granular, highlighting the courageous men and women who stood tall in a hail of bullets.' Oprah Daily, 'Best Books to Pick Up This May' 'Few historians are defter at helping us make sense of our present than Elizabeth Hinton ... What emerges most clearly across the whole of the book is an urgent history of today' The Metropole 'An indispensable account of the devastating cycle of police violence and community violence in the United States from the 1960s to the 2020s ... Essential to any understanding of the state of the nation, and the way from here.' Jill Lepore, bestselling author of These Truths: A History of the United States 'In this powerful, eye-opening book, Elizabeth Hinton reframes our understanding of the origins of the current struggle for racial justice ... No book could be more timely.' Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Fiery Trial and DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University