RaveLibrary JournalThis enticing mix of personal and general history of Black utopian safe spaces promises to engage readers interested in reckoning with the past and present of Black American experiences and milestones.
Henry Louis Gates
RaveLibrary JournalThis gem brilliantly reflects multiple depictions of what it means to be a Black American amid complex, structured interracial and color-based discrimination discourses, in which writing and language are keys.
Jonathan Eig
RaveLibrary JournalMining a trove of materials—many only recently available—augmented with voluminous archival work and hundreds of interviews for personal insights, Eig advances the already appreciable quantity of first-rate biographies and intensive scholarship on King ... A must for readers interested in moving beyond clichéd catchphrases to see a more complete and complex King, the context of his charisma, and the creation and content of his character.
Andrew K Diemer
PositiveLibrary Journalthis is more than a biography of Still. Diemer also develops a larger story about Philadelphia’s dynamic Black community. He features the everyday work that organized and empowered Black freedom fighters. As Still did, Diemer emphasizes that Black people worked to save themselves ... Diemer rightly situates Still amid the center of the efforts against slavery and supplies an inviting narrative of the 19th-century fight between Black Americans and white supremacist oppression.
Donald Yacovone
RaveLibrary JournalEssential ... Amid the current culture war with its battles over public school boards, curricula, and libraries, this accessible, thoroughly documented, and well-reasoned work is essential reading for all interested in truly understanding America’s past and the systemic distortions to repress and restrict the historical narrative with an insidious ideology.
Jamie Susskind
PositiveLibrary JournalWhile urging U.S. and EU readers to understand we can do better than leave people to fend for themselves against corporate power, Susskind recognizes formidable challenges to governing digital technologies in a world where the digital is political ... Susskind provides historical background and philosophical underpinnings for a robust but admitted patchwork of efforts to get past political gridlock and on to adapting to the needs of the unfolding century.
Reece Jones
PositiveLibrary JournalJones summons readers concerned about abuse of authority, accountability, human rights, and establishing justice to demand rethinking and revising the USBP’s expansive reach, with its legalized racial profiling and carved out exceptions to constitutional protections, along with the implications of an unchecked, heavily militarized police force operating throughout the U.S.
Kim Kelly
PositiveLibrary JournalFocusing on women and workers of color, invariably low-paid physical laborers, Kelly’s episodic survey details workplace contributions of usually ignored but essential folk ... This accessible, inspiring, and instructive read belongs in school libraries, in university classrooms, and in general readers’ hands for its lessons about workers’ united power and the unfinished business of workplace justice.
Dorothy Roberts
RaveLibrary JournalPunctuated with poignant cases of systemic horrors, the compelling narrative delivers data-rich analysis that reflects decades of research, observation, and advocacy for Black children and mothers ... Readers at every level, especially policy-makers and -implementers, might well embrace this work as a primer for moving past a harmful system and creating a reimagined ideology and infrastructure to humanely care for families and keep children safe. Roberts’s latest is necessary reading.
Erwin Chemerinsky
RaveLibrary JournalChemerinsky provides an insightful primer for understanding the judicial decisions that support the United States’ prevailing authoritarian, paramilitary, racist approach to policing. He points out problems but also lays out steps to overcoming the Supreme Court’s consistent failure. A thoughtful, provocative, and instructive must-read for anyone concerned with justice and domestic tranquility.
Akhil Reed Amar
RaveLibrary JournalAmar (law and political science, Yale Univ.; America’s Unwritten Constitution) blends biographical narratives with constitutional analysis to consider the American Revolution, the Confederation years, the Constitutional Convention, and the early national period ... Amar’s multifaceted treatment of the start of the U.S. constitutional project illustrates much about our historical memory and demonstrates that there is far more to the constitution than the document itself; all this complicates its understanding. Although sometimes dense in detail, Amar’s original work offers general readers an accessible and often entertaining narrative and lessons to glean from the founding document of the United States. The wide range of material covered in the book will give scholars plenty of interpretations to engage with.
Joshua D. Rothman
PositiveLibrary JournalRothman brings to life the enormity of the lucrative interstate and intrastate merchandising of brutalized Black bodies as instruments of capital and exchange in an American commerce bottomed on instruments of torture like the shackle and whip ... This wide-ranging and meticulously documented study interweaves biography, family dynamics, business contours and networks, and local and national developments to show how slavery and capitalism were always intertwined. Rothman carefully details how the success of Franklin & Armfield was aided by innovations in technology, infrastructure, information, and finance ... xplaining how trafficking in slaves advanced private and public priorities as it produced great wealth and promoted national growth, Rothman displays the ever-present and impoverishing cost to the enslaved. A must-read account that sheds light on the interdependence of slavery and capitalism in the United States.
Jamal Greene
PositiveLibrary JournalProvocative reading for those interested in legal reform and a civil society.
Julian Bond
RaveLibrary JournalThis compilation of [Bond\'s] original lecture notes is filled with detail, insight, and synopsis. The graceful narrative lays out pointers for effective mobilization as it explains what happened and who made it happen at pivotal times in the 1950s and 1960s’ nationalization of the civil rights movement that transcended traditional legal approaches to take the battle from courtrooms to the streets. Included are photographs by Danny Lyon and an afterword by Vann R. Newkirk II ... Mixing reminiscence and analysis of the long struggle against white supremacy, Bond’s lessons provide general readers and scholars alike penetrating studies of ideals, motivations, compromises, suffering, and sacrifice that won Blacks’ release from the worst of racist Southern pathology. Essential reading.
Catherine Coleman Flowers
PositiveLibrary JournalMixing memoir, civil rights history, and polemic, this blunt litany by Flowers delivers a call to action for all concerned about sustainable solutions to the shamefully inadequate environmental infrastructure, policies, and practices in the United States.
Sudhir Hazareesingh
RaveLibrary JournalTracing the growth of Louverture from revolutionary leader to mythic figure, this engrossing read reveals and recovers the historic place both he and the country of Haiti deserve to occupy in the story of the Atlantic world’s creation and re-creation.
Adam Cohen
RaveLibrary JournalWeaving legal, political, and social history, Cohen creates a richly detailed, but accessible, account for all interested in the personalities and politics that have shaped and are continuing to shape not only the U.S. criminal justice system but also the fabric of American life. A must-read.
Melvin I. Urofsky
PositiveLibrary JournalFocused on federal law, particularly U.S. Supreme Court cases, this narrative recollects continuous conflicts within an undeniably long history of disparate treatment ... This book purposely offers more questions than answers as Urofsky leads us to consider how law should best combat the legacies of racism, sexism, and ableism in order to open doors of opportunity to previously excluded groups. A thought-provoking read.
Gilda R. Daniels
PositiveLibrary JournalReplete with documentary evidence and examples, this work sounds an alarm for any and all readers interested in reversing the damage and danger of the nondemocratic dynamic threatening truth, justice, and the fight to vote.
Ibram X. Kendi
PositiveLibrary JournalKendi\'s provocative egalitarian argument combines prodigious reading and research with keen insights into the manipulative power of racist ideologies that suppress the recognition of diversity. This is a must for serious readers of American history, politics, or social thought.
Kerri K. Greenidge
PositiveLibrary JournalGreenidge situates the protest leader and agitator in time and place, showing his unflinching public outrage in advancing grassroots racial justice and full citizenship rights ... Greenidge\'s meticulously documented, free-flowing narrative draws telling comparisons between the opening of the 20th and 21st centuries to reorient the career of black radicalism, showing how Trotter developed the art of public protest and civil disobedience. A must-read for both scholars and general readers interested in the civil rights movement.
Imani Perry
RaveLibrary JournalPerry’s uplifting and often lyrical meditation on living invites readers to delve into their self and particularly into the complicated categories of mother, parent, African American, and human. Highly recommended.
Annette Gordon-Reed
RaveLibrary JournalBlending biography, genealogy, and history, Gordon-Reed...brings to life the family from which Sally Hemings (1773-1835) came and the family that she and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) created ... This is a masterpiece brimming with decades of dedicated research and dexterous writing. It is essential for any collection on U.S. history, Colonial America, Virginia, slavery, or miscegenation.
