Hailed by Zadie Smith and Ta-Nehisi Coates, this new edition of the celebrated contemporary work on race and racism “ought to be positioned at the center of any discussion of race in American life” (Bookforum).Most people assume racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of...

Bitter Fruits of Bondage is the late Armstead L. Robinson’s magnum opus, a controversial history that explodes orthodoxies on both sides of the historical debate over why the South lost the Civil War.Recent studies, while conceding the importance of social factors in the unraveling of the Confederacy, still conclude that the South was defeated as a result of its losses on the battlefield, which in turn resulted largely from the superiority of Northern military manpower and industri...

The last generation of Americans with a living memory of Jim Crow will soon disappear. They leave behind a collective memory of segregation shaped increasingly by its horrors and heroic defeat but not a nuanced understanding of everyday life in Jim Crow America. In The South, Adolph L. Reed Jr.—New Orleanian, political scientist, and according to Cornel West, "the greatest democratic theorist of his generation"—takes up the urgent task of recounting the granular realities of life ...

Tackling the myth of a post-racial societyMost people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racec...

In these essays, brought together by the scholar Wahneema Lubiano, some of today's most respected intellectuals share their ideas on race, power, gender, and society.The authors, including Cornel West, Angela Y. Davis, and Toni Morrison, argue that we have reached a crisis of democracy represented by an ominous shift toward a renewed white nationalism in which racism is operating in coded, quasi-respectable new forms.

"[A] passionate, compelling, and disturbing argument that the ills of democracy in the United States today arise from the default of its elites." —John Gray, New York Times Book Review (front-page review)In a front-page review in the Washington Post Book World, John Judis wrote: "Political analysts have been poring over exit polls and precinct-level votes to gauge the meaning of last November's election, but they would probably better employ their...

"For God, for country, and for Yale... in that order," William F. Buckley Jr. wrote as the dedication of his monumental work—a compendium of knowledge that still resonates within the halls of the Ivy League university that tried to cover up its political and religious bias.In 1951, a twenty-five-year-old Yale graduate published his first book, which exposed the "extraordinarily irresponsible educational attitude" that prevailed at his alma mater. The book, God and ...

"A major and challenging work. . . . Provocative, and certain to be controversial. . . . Will add important new dimension to the continuing debate on the decline of liberalism." —William Julius Wilson, New York Times Book ReviewCan we continue to believe in progress? In this sobering analysis of the Western human condition, Christopher Lasch seeks the answer in a history of the struggle between two ideas: one is the idea of progress - an idea driven by the conviction that ...

In A Tolerable Anarchy, Jedediah Purdy traces the history of the American understanding of freedom, an ideal that has inspired the country’s best—and worst—moments, from independence and emancipation to war and economic uncertainty. Working from portraits of famous American lives, like Frederick Douglas and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Purdy asks crucial questions about our relationship to liberty: Does capitalism perfect or destroy freedom? Does freedom mean following tradition, God’s wo...

The bestseller that reminded us what it means to be an American is more timely than ever in this updated and enlarged edition, including "Schlesinger's Syllabus," an annotated reading list of core books on the American experience.The classic image of the American nation — a melting pot in which differences of race, wealth, religion, and nationality are submerged in democracy — is being replaced by an orthodoxy that celebrates difference and abandons assimilation. While this upsurge...

A timely and gripping history of the controversial eugenics movement in America–and the scientists, social reformers and progressives who supported it.In Better for All the World, Harry Bruinius charts the little known history of eugenics in America–a movement that began in the early twentieth century and resulted in the forced sterilization of more than 65,000 people. Bruinius tells the stories of Emma and Carrie Buck, two women trapped in poverty who became the test case in the ...

Almost one-hundred years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois proposed the notion of the "talented tenth," an African American elite that would serve as leaders and models for the larger black community. In this unprecedented collaboration, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West--two of Du Bois's most prominent intellectual descendants--reassess that relationship and its implications for the future of black Americans. If the 1990s are the best of times for the heirs of the Talented Tenth, they are unquest...