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Verso celebrates Juneteenth

For Juneteenth: take 30% off books on slavery and race in America, including pre-orders of The Weight of Nightmares: Time and the Politics of Reparations for Slavery

Verso Books19 June 2026

Verso celebrates Juneteenth

June 19th is Juneteenth National Independence Day, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. It's an important marker in the ongoing struggle against racial disparity.

The titles on this list examine race from its conceptual origins, through its uses as a vehicle for othering and oppressing, to the struggles against racist systems and institutions – all 30% off through Sunday, June 21st.

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Book strip #1

  • Traces of History

    Traces of History

    by Patrick Wolfe

    Traces of History presents a new approach to race and to comparative colonial studies. Bringing a historical perspective to bear on the regimes of race that colonizers have sought to impose on A...
    Paperback

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • The Weight of Nightmares

    The Weight of Nightmares

    by Kenan Van De Mieroop-Al Bahrani

    In this provocative and thoughtful new book, Kenan van de Mieroop-Al Bahrani explores how capitalism, racism, debt, and inheritance operate through a politics of time, where history is never simply...
    Paperback
    Preorder Sale price $45.95

    This book will be shipped when it is published on 29 September 2026. You will be charged at the time of your order.

  • Beyond the Pale

    Beyond the Pale

    by Vron Ware

    Foreword by Mikki Kendall

    How have ideas about white women figured in the history of racism? Vron Ware argues that they have been central, and that feminism has largely developed as a political movement within racist societ...
  • The Fearless Benjamin Lay

    The Fearless Benjamin Lay

    by Marcus Rediker

    The Fearless Benjamin Lay chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular and astonishing man-a Quaker dwarf who became one of the first ever to demand the total, unconditional emancipati...
    Paperback

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • Freedom Ship

    Freedom Ship

    by Marcus Rediker

    Freedom Ship is a gripping history of the enslaved African Americans who stowed away on vessels that carried them to liberty. Up to 100,000 fugitives successfully fled the horrors of bondage in the...
    Hardback

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • No God But Gain

    No God But Gain

    by Stephen Chambers

    From 1501 to 1867 more than 12.5 million Africans were brought to the Americas in chains, and as many as 100 million Africans died as a result of the slave trade. The U.S. constitution set a 20-yea...
    Paperback

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery

    The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery

    by Robin Blackburn

    In 1770 a handful of European nations ruled the Americas, drawing from them a stream of products, both everyday and exotic. Some two and a half million black slaves, imprisoned in plantation coloni...
    Paperback (2011)

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • The Haitian Revolution

    The Haitian Revolution

    by Toussaint L'Ouverture

    Introduction by Jean-Bertrand Aristide

    Edited by Nick Nesbitt

    Toussaint L’Ouverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution in the late eighteenth century, in which slaves rebelled against their masters and established the first black republic. In this colle...
    Paperback

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • Development Arrested

    Development Arrested

    by Clyde Woods

    Foreword by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

    How could the Mississippi Delta, one of the world’s most prolific cultural centres, be demolished by a predictable natural disaster? This revised edition of Clyde Woods’s classic book examines disa...
    Paperback

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • The American Crucible

    The American Crucible

    by Robin Blackburn

    For over three centuries, slavery in the Americas fuelled the growth of capitalism. But the stirrings of a revolutionary age in the late eighteenth century challenged this “peculiar institution” an...
    Paperback

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • The Making of New World Slavery

    The Making of New World Slavery

    by Robin Blackburn

    The Making of New World Slavery argues that independent commerce, geared to burgeoning consumer markets, was the driving force behind the rise of plantation slavery. The baroque state sought—succes...
    Paperback (2010)

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • Prophet against Slavery

    Prophet against Slavery

    by David Lester

    Illustrated by David Lester

    Edited by Paul Buhle and Marcus Rediker

    Prophet against Slavery is an action-packed chronicle of a remarkable and radical individual. It is based on the award-winning biography by Marcus Rediker, which prompted the Quaker community that ...
    Paperback

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • Twice the Work of Free Labor

    Twice the Work of Free Labor

    by Alex Lichtenstein

    For the first time in a generation chain gangs have reappeared on the roads of the American South. Associated in the past with racial terrorism, this cruel and unusual punishment should invoke stro...
    Paperback

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

  • The Wages of Whiteness

    The Wages of Whiteness

    by David R. Roediger

    Preface by Priyamvada Gopal

    Introduction by Kathleen Cleaver

    An enduring history of how race and class came together to mark the course of the antebellum US and our present crisis. Roediger shows that in a nation pledged to independence, but less and less ab...
    Paperback

    We are sorry this title is currently unavailable for purchase in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

Book strip #2