THE PRICE OF THE TICKET: BARACK OBAMA AND RISE AND DECLINE OF BLACK POLITICS. By Frederick C. Harris. Hardback, 232 Pages. Oxford University Press. In The Price of the Ticket, Harris puts Obama's career in the context of decades of black activism, showing how his election undermined the very movement that made it possible. The path to his presidency began just before passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, when black leaders began to discuss strategies to make the most of their new access to the ballot. Some argued that black voters should organize into a cohesive, independent bloc; others urged a more race-neutral approach, working together with other racial minorities as well as like-minded whites. This has been the fundamental divide within black politics ever since. At first, the gap did not seem serious. But the post-civil-rights era has accelerated a shift towards race-neutral politics. Obama made a point of distancing himself from older race-conscious black leaders, such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson--even though, as Harris shows, he owes much to Jackson's earlier campaigns for the White House.
THE COLOR OF CHRIST: THE SON OF GOD AND THE SAGA OF RACE IN AMERICA. By Edward J. Blum & Paul Harvey. Cloth. University of North Carolina Press. The Color of Christ uncovers how, in a country founded by Puritans who destroyed depictions of Jesus, Americans came to believe in the whiteness of Christ. Some envisioned a white Christ who would sanctify the exploitation of Native Americans and African Americans and bless imperial expansion. Many others gazed at a messiah, not necessarily white, who was willing and able to confront white supremacy. The color of Christ still symbolizes America's most combustible divisions, revealing the power and malleability of race and religion from colonial times to the presidency of Barack Obama.
THE FIRE OF FREEDOM: ABRAHAM GALLOWAY & THE SLAVES' CIVIL WAR By David S. Cecelski. Hardcover. University of North Carolina Press. Abraham H. Galloway (1837-70) was a fiery young slave rebel, radical abolitionist, and Union spy who rose out of bondage to become one of the most significant and stirring black leaders in the South during the Civil War. Throughout his brief, mercurial life, Galloway fought against slavery and injustice. He risked his life behind enemy lines, recruited black soldiers for the North, and fought racism in the Union army's ranks. He also stood at the forefront of an African American political movement that flourished in the Union-occupied parts of North Carolina, even leading a historic delegation of black southerners to the White House to meet with President Lincoln and to demand the full rights of citizenship. He later became one of the first black men elected to the North Carolina legislature.
OBAMA AND AMERICA'S POLITICAL FUTURE By Theda Skocpol. Harvard University Press. Barack Obama’s galvanizing victory in 2008, coming amid the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s, opened the door to major reforms. But the president quickly faced skepticism from supporters and fierce opposition from Republicans, who scored sweeping wins in the 2010 midterm election. Here, noted political scientist Theda Skocpol surveys the political landscape and explores its most consequential questions: What happened to Obama’s “new New Deal”? Why have his achievements enraged opponents more than they have satisfied supporters? How has the Tea Party’s ascendance reshaped American politics?
ON BULLSHIT By Harry G. Frankfurt. Cloth. Princeton University Press. One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."
TAKING IT BIG: C. WRIGHT MILLS AND THE MAKING OF POLITICAL INTELLECTUALS By Stanley Aronowitz. Hardcover. Columbia University Press.C. Wright Mills (1916--1962) was a pathbreaking intellectual who transformed the independent American Left in the 1940s and 1950s. Often challenging the established ideologies and approaches of fellow leftist thinkers, Mills was central to creating and developing the idea of the "public intellectual" in postwar America and laid the political foundations for the rise of the New Left in the 1960s. Written by Stanley Aronowitz, a leading sociologist and critic of American culture and politics, Taking It Big reconstructs this icon's formation and the new dimension of American political life that followed his work.
MADMEN, INTELLECTUALS, AND ACADEMIC SCRIBBLERS: THE ECONOMIC ENGINE OF POLITICAL CHANGE By Wayne A. Leighton and Edward J. Lopez. Cloth. Stanford University Press. Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers offers up a simple, economic framework for understanding the systematic causes of political change. In order to distill the smörgåsbord of scholarship on political evolution, Madmen takes up three fundamental, interrelated questions: Why do democracies generate policies that impose net costs on society? Why do such policies persist over long periods of time, even though they may be widely known to be socially wasteful and even though better alternatives could be implemented? And why do certain wasteful policies eventually get repealed (e.g., airline rate and route regulation), while others endure (e.g., sugar subsidies and tariffs)?
IN THE CROSSFIRE: MARCUS FOSTER AND THE TROUBLED HISTORY OF AMERICAN SCHOOL REFORM By John P. Spencer. Cloth. University of Pennsylvania Press. "In this timely and important book, John Spencer situates the tragically shortened life of the brilliant African American educator Marcus Foster in multiple contexts: the history of urban education, urban politics, and debates around strategies of school reform. Foster was one of the most dynamic and influential urban educators of the 1960s and early 1970s, and his career coincided with momentous developments in civil rights, the urban violence that rocked American cities, and economic crisis. Given the current prominence of school reform as an issue of national importance, In the Crossfire should have a wide and varied readership."—Michael Katz, University of Pennsylvania
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