Explores the intersection of racial thought and reproductive science and policy across the British Empire.

In Generating Difference, Andrew Wells traces the entwined histories of race, sex, and reproduction in Britain and its empire during the long eighteenth century. Challenging the assumption that the concept of race evolved in the modern era solely through new forms of biological science, Wells argues that older ideas of lineage, sexual reproduction, and bodily difference remained central to how race was understood, categorized, and enforced well into the nineteenth century.

From the pages of Enlightenment science to colonial policy in the Caribbean, South Asia, and the Pacific, Wells shows how reproductive sex served as a primary framework for defining human differences. Concepts of identity were written onto bodies—especially those marked as non-white or non-male—through perceived differences in anatomy, fertility, and sexuality, albeit never unproblematically. Whether in debates about slavery, interracial relationships, embryology, or population policy, the reproductive body became the crucible in which ideas about race and sex were forged and maintained.

Offering a global scope beyond the Atlantic, including South Asia and the Pacific, and drawing from a wide range of sources—from satire to scientific treatises—Generating Difference brings the scholarship of race and sexuality into direct and compelling conversation. Wells uncovers how deeply reproduction structured imperial ideologies and how the policing of bodies helped naturalize hierarchy, control, and exclusion. At its core, the book reconsiders what made difference "visible" in a period before the dominance of the idea of racial biology.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Johns Hopkins University Press

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 13, 2026

• Author: Andrew Wells

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 390 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1421453606

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1421453606

From The Queen of Sugar Hill author ReShonda Tate—a new novel inspired by beloved Harlem jazz performer Hazel Scott and the equal parts exhilarating and tumultuous relationship that changed the course of her life.

Harlem, 1943. At just twenty-three, Hazel Scott is a woman on fire. A jazz prodigy, a glamorous film star, and a fierce advocate for civil rights, she’s breaking barriers and refusing to play by the rules. Then Adam Clayton Powell Jr. walks into her life. Harlem’s most electrifying preacher-turned-politician, Adam is as bold and unyielding as Hazel—charismatic, powerful…and married.

This kicks off a decades-long relationship that propels them into the center of a political and cultural revolution. As Hazel’s star rises, Adam takes the national stage in Congress and the couple becomes the toast of the country. But when their affair turns into a marriage, behind the glamorous façade is a battlefield of ego, ambition, and sacrifice. Forced to choose between her music and her family, Hazel must decide what she’s willing to lose—and what she refuses to give up.

Set against the pulsing backdrop of twentieth-century Harlem and featuring icons like Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin, With Love from Harlem is a sweeping, emotionally charged romantic drama, rich with historical detail. ReShonda Tate delivers a powerful portrait of love, art, and the price of being unforgettable.