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Written in 1963, Blues People came out of LeRoi Jones’s interest in the African and African American origins of blues and jazz music, and later the development of forms like gospel, bebop, and swing. It’s still considered a seminal book on black music, as well as on the ways that slavery and racism informed black musical forms and culture. It also explores the ways black music’s perspectives influenced American popular culture, a relationship of ideas, values, and artistic influences that remains ongoing.

This Day joins other excellent and visually appealing books on rap and hip hop like Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Jay Z’s Decoded, and The Rap Year Book by Shea Serrano; what sets This Day apart is its reference book format. The information is presented as a timeline, which makes it a great resource for fact-checking or entertaining mini-reads. Powell’s bookseller Kate L. writes, “Leave it to none other than Chuck D, one of the most influential MCs of our time, to bring this much-needed compendium of rap and hip hop milestones into existence. This Day is a chronological history that spans from 1973, when DJ Kool Herc hit the scene with his infamous "Back to School Jam" party, to 2016, when A Tribe Called Quest released their comeback album, featuring vocals from our dearly departed, Phife Dawg. Rap and hip hop fans, b-boys and b-girls: You need this book in your collection!”

This beautiful and comprehensive art history book, based on an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, examines black art from 1963-83, and in particular the ways aesthetics, racial politics and identity, and black history intersect in young artists’ work from that period. Examining lesser-known artists like David Hammons and Betye Saar, one of the most fascinating aspects of this collection is the obvious parallel that can be drawn between the ideas and forms energizing this work and those informing artists today.

Baltimore photographer Devin Allen gained national acclaim for his street photography of the protests that erupted after the death of Freddie Gray. Those photographs are collected in A Beautiful Ghetto, a selection of black and white images that grip and stun with their energy, pathos, and composition.

This book is so awesome! And gorgeous! And fascinating! Shantrelle P. Lewis explores black dandyism throughout history, positing fashion as an instrument of rebellion against widely disseminated images of black masculinity, both specifically racist in origin and those popularized by mainstream rap and hip hop. It’s an engaging way to examine the way images limit our understanding of others and individuals’ abilities to express themselves. It’s also just a lot of fun. If you’re remotely interested in fashion history or issues of black masculinity — or just like to look at beautiful, color-saturated photographs of gorgeous people wearing stunning clothes — Dandy Lion is well worth picking up.

This recommendation comes from our fine arts buyer. Riffling through the images, it’s easy to see why: Kerry James Marshall’s paintings almost always place the black body front and center, marrying formal composition with black folk art-inspired themes and colors, among other forms and traditions. Marshall is outspoken about the need to see art by and of black people in the mainstream art world, and has dedicated most of his artistic career to creating work that celebrates and references black history and culture. This Tate, et al. overview of Marshall’s work vividly illustrates his formidable talent.

Danez Smith’s fierce and mournful second poetry collection confronts death in various guises, but most explicitly in forms that threaten black male livelihood, like police shootings and HIV/AIDS. Despite the often bleak themes of the poems, elation radiates out of Smith’s verse at unexpected moments, capturing bliss and play concurrently with sharp articulations of what it’s like to experience blackness, queerness, and illness in today’s America. You’ll want to read every one of these amazing poems out loud, but better yet, watch Smith do it.