• Jumel Terrace Books

    Revolutionary & Colonial Washington Heights, Harlem, Africa, West Indies, Art, Myth, History & Literature: Slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Theology, Military, Labor, Civil Rights, Negritude, Black Power.

"An Oasis for the Unrestrained Pursuit of Knowledge"
*************And a "Nugget" in the Rubbish*************

Uptown's only bookshop specializing in local history, African & American. The shop on 160th Street, open by appointment or serendipity, faces the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the headquarters of George Washington during 1776’s Battle of Harlem Heights, & our stock addresses its significance in 18th & 20th century Revolutionary American history.

As Sugar Hill, the neighborhood has retained its reputation as the intellectual & artistic home of Black America. Jumel Terrace Books follows in the tradition of bookstores serving the community since George Young’s Book Exchange opened in 1920. Before Black Studies entered college curriculums in 1968, shops like Lewis Micheaux’s House of Common Sense & Home of Proper Propaganda & Richard B Moore’s Frederick Douglass Book Center were important sources of education, aspiration & inspiration. As did our predecessors, we buy & sell very good books on our subjects.

Jumel Terrace Books - Blog

The Pleasures of the Library

“Two years ago, I suddenly needed, while doing a tricky translation, to look up something in the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the one that comes with a magnifying glass on account of the very small print – and although it is described as “compact”, it has taken up a lot of room […]

José Martí visitation at Jumel Terrace Books

Confidence Men, Feb. Jumel Terrace Books, 2005

I’ve always wanted to write a Confidence Man story for thugs and the women who love them.  A Mookie Jackson story. As I once wrote in a piece on the Ghetto Harlequin phenomenon, regards founding father Daniel Defoe, “One of street literature’s great subjects has always been the highlife player, the big-dicked, bejeweled raconteur/entrepreneur, no […]