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When crack was king: A people's history of a misunderstood era
Par Donovan X Ramsey. 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A “vivid and frank” (NPR) account of the crack cocaine era and a…
community’s ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic “A master class in disrupting a stubborn narrative, a monumental feat for the fraught subject of addiction in Black communities.”— The Washington Post “A poignant and compelling re-examination of a tragic era in America history . . . insightful . . . and deeply moving.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Just Mercy FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • ONE OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND VULTURE ’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, She Reads, Electric Lit, The Mary Sue The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is arguably the least examined crisis in American history. Beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan’s war on drugs, journalist Donovan X. Ramsey’s exacting analysis traces the path from the last triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement to the devastating realities we live with today: a racist criminal justice system, continued mass incarceration and gentrification, and increased police brutality. When Crack Was King follows four individuals to give us a startling portrait of crack’s destruction and devastating legacy: Elgin Swift, an archetype of American industry and ambition and the son of a crack-addicted father who turned their home into a “crack house”; Lennie Woodley, a former crack addict and sex worker; Kurt Schmoke, the longtime mayor of Baltimore and an early advocate of decriminalization; and Shawn McCray, community activist, basketball prodigy, and a founding member of the Zoo Crew, Newark’s most legendary group of drug traffickers. Weaving together riveting research with the voices of survivors, When Crack Was King is a crucial reevaluation of the era and a powerful argument for providing historically violated communities with the resources they deserveAfrican american history: A very short introduction
Par Jonathan Scott Holloway. 2023
What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering…
this seemingly simple question. This book illuminates the US's core paradoxes, inviting profound questions about what it means to be an American, a citizen, and a human being. This book considers how, for centuries, African Americans have fought for what the black feminist intellectual Anna Julia Cooper called "the cause of freedom." It begins in Jamestown in 1619, when the first shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in that settlement. It narrates the creation of a system of racialized chattel slavery, the eventual dismantling of that system in the national bloodletting of the Civil War, and the ways that civil rights disputes have continued to erupt in the more than 150 years since Emancipation. This Very Short Introduction carries forward to the Black Lives Matter movement, a grass-roots activist convulsion that declared that African Americans' present and past have value and meaning. At a moment when political debates grapple with the nation's obligation to acknowledge and perhaps even repair its original sin of racialized slavery, author Jonathan Scott Holloway tells a story about American citizens' capacity and willingness to realize the ideal articulated in America's founding document, namely, that all people were created equalAn army afire: How the us army confronted its racial crisis in the vietnam era
Par Beth Bailey. 2023
By the late 1960s, what had been widely heralded as the best qualified, best-trained army in United States history was…
descending into crisis as the Vietnam War raged without end. Morale was tanking. AWOL rates were rising. And in August 1968, a group of Black soldiers seized control of the infamous Long Binh Jail, burned buildings, and beat a white inmate to death with a shovel. The days of "same mud, same blood" were over, and a new generation of Black GIs had decisively rejected the slights and institutional racism their forefathers had endured. As Black and white soldiers fought in barracks and bars, with violence spilling into surrounding towns within the United States and in West Germany, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan, army leaders grew convinced that the growing racial crisis undermined the army's ability to defend the nation. Acclaimed military historian Beth Bailey shows how the United States Army tried to solve that racial crisis (in army terms, "the problem of race"). Army leaders were surprisingly creative in confronting demands for racial justice, even willing to challenge fundamental army principles of discipline, order, hierarchy, and authority. Bailey traces a frustrating yet fascinating story, as a massive, conservative institution came to terms with demands for changeThe survivors of the clotilda: The lost stories of the last captives of the american slave trade
Par Hannah Durkin. 2024
Joining the ranks of Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Zora Neale Hurston's rediscovered classic Barracoon, an…
immersive and revelatory history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on US soil, told through the stories of its survivors—the last documented survivors of any slave ship—whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways. The Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on American soil, docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860—more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. The last of its survivors lived well into the twentieth century. They were the last witnesses to the final act of a terrible and significant period in world history. In this epic work, Dr. Hannah Durkin tells the stories of the Clotilda's 110 captives, drawing on her intensive archival, historical, and sociological research. The Survivors of the Clotilda follows their lives from their kidnappings in what is modern-day Nigeria through a terrifying 45-day journey across the Middle Passage; from the subsequent sale of the ship's 103 surviving children and young people into slavery across Alabama to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Selma; from the foundation of an all-Black African Town (later Africatown) in Northern Mobile—an inspiration for writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora Neale Hurston—to the foundation of the quilting community of Gee's Bend—a Black artistic circle whose cultural influence remains enormous. An astonishing, deeply compelling tapestry of history, biography, and social commentary, The Survivors of the Clotilda is a tour de force that deepens our knowledge and understanding of the Black experience and of America and its tragic pastOur history has always been contraband: In defense of black studies
Par Colin Kaepernick. 2023
Since its founding as a discipline, Black Studies has been under relentless attack by social and political forces seeking to…
discredit and neutralize it. Our History Has Always Been Contraband was born out of an urgent need to respond to the latest threat: efforts to remove content from an AP African American Studies course being piloted in high schools across the United States. Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Our History Has Always Been Contraband brings together canonical texts and authors in Black Studies, including those excised from or not included in the AP curriculum. Featuring writings by: David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, James Baldwin, June Jordan, Angela Y. Davis, Robert Allen, Barbara Smith, Toni Cade Bambara, bell hooks, Barbara Christian, and many others. Our History Has Always Been Contraband excerpts readings that cut across and between literature, political theory, law, psychology, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, queer and feminist theory, and history. This volume also includes original essays by editors Kaepernick, Kelley, and Taylor, elucidating how we got here, and pieces by Brea Baker, Marlon Williams-Clark, and Roderick A. Ferguson detailing how we can fight backA Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States
Par Reiko Hillyer. 2024
Throughout the twentieth century, even the harshest prison systems in the United States were rather porous. Incarcerated people were regularly…
released from prison for Christmas holidays; the wives of incarcerated men could visit for seventy-two hours relatively unsupervised; and governors routinely commuted the sentences of people convicted of murder. By the 1990s, these practices had become rarer as politicians and the media—in contrast to corrections officials—described the public as potential victims who required constant protection against the threat of violence. In A Wall Is Just a Wall Reiko Hillyer focuses on gubernatorial clemency, furlough, and conjugal visits to examine the origins and decline of practices that allowed incarcerated people to transcend prison boundaries. Illuminating prisoners’ lived experiences as they suffered, critiqued, survived, and resisted changing penal practices, she shows that the current impermeability of the prison is a recent, uneven, and contested phenomenon. By tracking the “thickening” of prison walls, Hillyer historicizes changing ideas of risk, the growing bipartisan acceptance of permanent exile and fixing the convicted at the moment of their crime as a form of punishment, and prisoners’ efforts to resist.Washington on Foot, Sixth Edition Revised and Expanded
Par William Bonstra, Judith Meany. 2024
An essential walking tour guide to one of the most walkable and historic cities in the US, perfect for first-time…
visitors and longtime residents alikeThis updated 6th edition of the perennial favorite Washington on Foot features 24 user-friendly maps, including new content on the Wharf, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, H Street NE, and the Brookland/Catholic University neighborhood. With architectural illustrations and fascinating information on the city's history and culture, Washington on Foot makes touring DC (and its neighboring Old Town Alexandria and Takoma Park) easy, entertaining, and educational. The book guides readers on how to best appreciate all the city has to offer, from familiar monuments and museums to hidden gems and lesser-known historic sites and neighborhoods. Some exciting stops include: The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception US Botanic Garden Dumbarton Oaks National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Friendship Firehouse Mexican Cultural Institute Old Georgetown Incinerator U Street NW There's no better way to experience the history and culture of the nation's capital than to walk through it and catch details you might miss otherwise. Washington on Foot highlights those details, large and small, to make for an unbeatable DC experience.A fascinating examination of what &“the pursuit of happiness&” meant to our nation&’s Founders and how that famous phrase defined…
their lives and became the foundation of our democracy.The Declaration of Independence identified &“the pursuit of happiness&” as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives. By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good—the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with enslavement of African Americans, although the Virginians betrayed their own principles. The Pursuit of Happiness is more than an elucidation of the Declaration&’s famous phrase; it is a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders, and a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.The Search for Reagan: The Appealing Intellectual Conservatism of Ronald Reagan
Par Craig Shirley. 2024
Never before has anyone explored the mind, soul, and heart of Ronald Reagan. The Search for Reagan explores the challenges…
and controversies in Reagan&’s life and how he successfully dealt with each, depicting a man who was never as conservative as some conservatives wanted him to be, but rather as conservative as he was comfortable being—a man who wanted to win on his own terms and integrity.Ronald Reagan was a singularly unique man and conservative who championed a wildly successful revolution—leading to more freedom and less government for the American people and to the fall of communism, while boosting American morale, which had been his three big goals. He was the first president in many years who believed optimism from the Oval Office had a direct bearing on the affairs of the nation. As a consequence, he left office more popular than when he entered with a whopping 73 percent approval. He is beloved even today as his presidential library is visited far more than any other presidential library, by more than five million people each year. He understood that American conservatism was based upon the individual and not the group. He is still regarded as one of the most admired men in America. The range of Reagan scholarship by virtue of books sold about him continues to grow. In his presidency, he solved the mystery of high inflation that had bedeviled his predecessor, high interest rates, and high gas prices. He created over twenty million new jobs, and the number of American millionares grew from 4,414 to 34,944. He quite literally changed our world for the better and is considered by most historians to be one of our four greatest presidents, along with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt.Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration
Par Harold Holzer. 2024
From acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, a groundbreaking account of Lincoln&’s grappling with the politics of immigration against the…
backdrop of the Civil War.In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation&’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America&’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry.Abraham Lincoln&’s rise ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split and ultimately destroy Lincoln&’s Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were, and how interwoven they had become in American society.Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize, charts Lincoln&’s political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship. As Holzer writes, &“The Civil War could not have been won without Lincoln&’s leadership; but it could not have been fought without the immigrant soldiers who served and, by the tens of thousands, died that the &‘nation might live.&’&” An utterly captivating and illuminating work, Brought Forth on This Continent assesses Lincoln's life and legacy in a wholly original way, unveiling remarkable similarities between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.For two Americans in Saigon in 1963, the personal and the political combine to spark the drama of a lifetime…
Before it spread into a tragic war that defined a generation, the conflict in Vietnam smoldered as a guerrilla insurgency and a diplomatic nightmare. Into this volatile country stepped Frederick &“Fritz&” Nolting, the US ambassador, and his second-in-command, William &“Bill&” Trueheart, immortalized in David Halberstam&’s landmark work The Best and the Brightest and accidental players in a pivotal juncture in modern US history.Diplomats at War is a personal memoir by former Washington Post reporter Charles Trueheart—Bill&’s son and Nolting&’s godson—who grew up amid the events that traumatized two families and an entire nation. The book embeds the reader at the US embassy and dissects the fateful rift between Nolting and Trueheart over their divergent assessments of the South Vietnamese regime under Ngo Dinh Diem, who would ultimately be assassinated in a coup backed by the United States. Charles Trueheart retells the story of the United States&’ headlong plunge into war from an entirely new vantage point—that of a son piecing together how his father and godfather participated in, and were deeply damaged by, this historic flashpoint. Their critical rupture, which also destroyed their close friendship, served as a dramatic preface to the United States&’ disastrous involvement in the Vietnam conflict.How to Steal a Presidential Election
Par Lawrence Lessig, Matthew Seligman. 2024
From two distinguished experts on election law, an alarming look at how the American presidency could be stolen—by entirely legal…
means Even in the fast and loose world of the Trump White House, the idea that a couple thousand disorganized protestors storming the U.S. Capitol might actually prevent a presidential succession was farfetched. Yet perfectly legal ways of overturning election results actually do exist, and they would allow a political party to install its own candidate in place of the true winner. Lawrence Lessig and Matthew Seligman work through every option available for subverting a presumptively legitimate result—from vice-presidential intervention to election decertification and beyond. While many strategies would never pass constitutional muster, Lessig and Seligman explain how some might. They expose correctable weaknesses in the system, including one that could be corrected only by the Supreme Court. Any strategy aimed at hacking a presidential election is a threat to democracy. This book is a clarion call to shore up the insecure system for electing the president before American democracy is forever compromised.A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity
Par Tyesha Maddox. 2024
A Home Away from Home examines the significance of Caribbean American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations to the immigrant…
experience, particularly their implications for the formation of a Pan-Caribbean American identity and Black diasporic politics.At the turn of the twentieth century, New York City exploded with the establishment of mutual aid societies and benevolent associations. Caribbean immigrants, especially women, eager to find their place in a bustling new world, created these organizations, including the West Indian Benevolent Association of New York City, founded in 1884. They served as forums for discussions on Caribbean American affairs, hosted cultural activities, and provided newly arrived immigrants with various forms of support, including job and housing assistance, rotating lines of credit, help in the naturalization process, and its most popular function—sickness and burial assistance. In examining the number of these organizations, their membership, and the functions they served, Tyesha Maddox argues that mutual aid societies not only fostered a collective West Indian ethnic identity among immigrants from specific islands, but also strengthened kinship networks with those back home in the Caribbean. Especially important to these processes were Caribbean women such as Elizabeth Hendrickson, co-founder of the American West Indian Ladies’ Aid Society in 1915 and the Harlem Tenants’ League in 1928.Immigrant involvement in mutual aid societies also strengthened the belief that their own fate was closely intertwined with the social, economic, and political welfare of the Black international community. A Home Away from Home demonstrates how Caribbean American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations in many ways became proto-Pan-Africanist organizations.A Quilted Life: Reflections of a Sharecropper's Daughter
Par Catherine Meeks. 2024
Catherine Meeks shares the wisdom she has garnered over the journey of her life, from her father&’s sharecropping fields to…
the academy and beyond. Today, Catherine Meeks is a national leader of racial healing and an esteemed retired professor of African American studies. But being a Black woman in America can be difficult. Join Meeks as she describes the adventures and adversity she encountered on her path to becoming an empowered voice for change. Growing up in Arkansas under the terror of Jim Crow, Meeks learned firsthand about injustice and the desperation it causes. But with the support of her family, she moved to LA to study at Pepperdine. When a Black teenager was killed by a campus security guard, Meeks awakened to her prophetic voice, and a local women&’s group gave her hope that racial reconciliation was possible. She later led a group of students to West Africa, where she met her husband. Yet her years-long battle with rheumatoid arthritis severed their relationship, leaving her a single mother. Meanwhile, she worked tirelessly at Mercer University to expand the African American studies program, all while earning her MSW and PhD. Quilting together these memories—bitter and sweet, traumatic and triumphant—Meeks shares her hard-earned wisdom: Learn how to discern the Creator&’s work. Listen to the voice saying &“yes&” to opportunity. Become a wounded healer. Know when to practice silence and when to speak out. Readers will leave the pages of A Quilted Life enriched by Meeks&’s unique perspective and insight.The Essential Writings of Robert A. Hill
Par Adam Ewing. 2024
Collected for the first time, the foundational contributions of a scholar and activist who shaped the study of Garveyism and…
pan-Africanism This volume brings together Robert A. Hill’s most important writings for the first time, highlighting his intellectual contributions to the history of pan-Africanism. A pioneering scholar and activist, a groundbreaking builder of pan-African archives, and the editor of the multivolume Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Hill remains underacknowledged for his influence on the field. This collection is a long-overdue testament to his legacy. Adam Ewing showcases Hill’s groundbreaking writings on Garveyism, the pan-African, anticolonial movement that spread across the globe following World War I. Hill’s essays trace Marcus Garvey’s evolving thought and illuminate the resonance of the movement in the Caribbean and its diaspora, in the United States, and across sub-Saharan Africa. The volume also includes Hill’s writings on diverse aspects of pan-Africanism, including the impostor figure in diaspora history, Cyril Briggs’s African Blood Brotherhood, the Rastafarian movement, the fiction of George Schuyler, George Beckford and the Abeng collective in Jamaica, the theories of Walter Rodney, the life and thought of C.L.R. James, and the music of Bob Marley. This volume not only demonstrates Hill’s intellectual praxis and its roots in his academic influences and personal experiences but also reveals the breadth, diversity, complexity, and centrality of the pan-African tradition in African diasporic politics and thought. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.&“No journalist knows more about toxic chemicals in the workplace than Jim Morris. The Cancer Factory is the crowning achievement of his…
estimable career spent walking fence lines, factory floors, and doctor&’s offices.&”—Dan Fagin, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Toms River&“The Cancer Factory could not come at a better time, as we reckon with how our bodies pay the price for our nation&’s toxic history and as today&’s workers fight not for only their rights but for their very lives.… A powerful and essential read.&”—Anna Clark, author of The Poisoned CityThe story of a group of Goodyear Tire and Rubber workers fatally exposed to toxic chemicals, the lawyer who sought justice on their behalf, and the shameful lack of protection our society affords all workersWorking at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company chemical plant in Niagara Falls, New York, was considered a good job. It was the kind of industrial manufacturing job that allowed blue-collar workers to thrive in the latter half of the 20th century—that allowed them to buy their own home, and maybe a small boat for the lake.But it was also the kind of job that exposed you to toxic chemicals and offered little to no protection from them, either in the way of protective gear or adequate ventilation. Eventually, it was a job that gave you bladder cancer.The Cancer Factory tells the story of the workers who experienced one of the nation&’s worst, and best-documented, outbreaks of work-related cancer, and the lawyer who has represented the bladder-cancer victims at the plant for more than 30 years. Goodyear, and its chemical supplier, DuPont, knew that two of the chemicals used in the plant had been shown to cause cancer, but made little effort to protect the plant&’s workers until the cluster of cancer cases—and deaths—was undeniable.In doing so it tells a broader story of corporate malfeasance and governmental neglect. Workers have only weak protections from exposure to toxic substances in America, and regulatory breaches contribute to an estimated 95,000 deaths from occupational illness each year. Based on 4 decades of reporting and delving deeply into the scientific literature about toxic substances and health risks, the arcana of worker regulations, and reality of loose enforcement, The Cancer Factory exposes the terrible health risks too many workers face.This amazing true story of America&’s first Black generals, Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and Jr., a father and son who…
helped integrate the American military and created the Tuskegee Airmen, is &“the book Black America needs in this moment&” (Eboni K. Williams, lawyer and cohost of State of the Culture).Red Tails, George Lucas&’s celebration of America&’s first Black flying squadron, the Tuskegee Airmen, should have been a moment of victory for Doug Melville. He expected to see his great-uncle Benjamin O. Davis Jr.—the squadron&’s commander—immortalized on-screen for his selfless contributions to America. But as the film rolled, Doug was shocked when he realized that Ben Jr.&’s name had been omitted and replaced by the fictional Colonel A. J. Bullard. And Ben&’s father, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., America&’s first Black general who helped integrate the military, was left out completely. Dejected, Doug looked inward and realized that unless he worked to bring their inspirational story to light, it would remain hidden from the world just as it had been concealed from him. In this &“thoughtful, highly readable blend of family and military history&” (Kirkus Reviews), Melville shares his quest to rediscover his family&’s story across five generations, from post-Civil War America to modern day Asia and Europe. In life, the Davises were denied the recognition and compensation they&’d earned, but through his journey, Melville uncovers something greater: that dedication and self-sacrifice can move proverbial mountains—even in a world determined to make you invisible. Invisible Generals recounts the lives of a father and his son who always maintained their belief in the American dream. As the inheritor of their legacy, Melville retraces their steps, advocates for them to receive their long-overdue honors and unlocks the potential we all hold to retrieve powerful family stories lost to the past.True Believer: Hubert Humphrey's Quest for a More Just America
Par James Traub. 2024
A celebrated historian recounts Hubert Humphrey&’s role as a liberal hero of twentieth-century America Hubert Humphrey was liberalism&’s most…
dedicated defender, and its most public and tragic sacrifice. As a young politician in 1948, he defied segregationists and forced the Democratic Party to commit itself to civil rights. As a senator in 1964, he made good on that commitment by helping pass the Civil Rights Act. But as Lyndon B. Johnson&’s vice president, his support for the war in Vietnam made him a target for both Right and Left, and he suffered a shattering loss in the presidential election of 1968. Though Humphrey&’s defeat was widely seen as the end of America&’s era of liberal optimism, he never gave up. Even after his humiliation on the most public stage, he crafted a new vision of economic justice to counter the yawning political divisions consuming American politics. This biography reveals a deep-dyed idealist willing to compromise and even fight ugly in pursuit of a better society. Elegantly crafted and strikingly relevant to the present, True Believer celebrates Hubert Humphrey&’s long struggle for justice for all.Biography of a Runaway Slave: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
Par Miguel Barnet. 1994
Fiftieth Anniversary Edition Originally published in 1966, Miguel Barnet's Biography of a Runaway Slave provides the written history of the…
life of Esteban Montejo, who lived as a slave, as a fugitive in the wilderness, and as a soldier fighting against Spain in the Cuban War of Independence. A new introduction by one of the most preeminent Afro-Hispanic scholars, William Luis, situates Barnet's ethnographic strategy and lyrical narrative style as foundational for the tradition of testimonial fiction in Latin American literature. Barnet recorded his interviews with the 103-year-old Montejo at the onset of the Cuban Revolution. This insurgent's history allows the reader into the folklore and cultural history of Afro-Cubans before and after the abolition of slavery. The book serves as an important contribution to the archive of the black experience in Cuba and as a reminder of the many ways that the present continues to echo the past.Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court's Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences
Par Joan Biskupic. 2023
New York Times Editor's Choice"Biskupic, an accomplished and well-sourced journalist, knows the court as well as anyone now covering it...…
In her new book Biskupic has done something different and a good deal harder. She has written a group narrative that combines close accounts of the court's public business in the Trump years with a history of its private dramas and conflicts... The deeper message of 'Nine Black Robes' is that even with a new president in office we remain captive to the Age of Trump... A quiet urgency ripples through this informative, briskly paced and gracefully written book." —New York Times Book Review "Biskupic opens a window onto the opaque, insular world of the justices to show an institution sinking gradually into crisis . . . Biskupic is a longtime chronicler of the court, and "Nine Black Robes" puts on display her connections within its chambers." —Washington Post"[Biskupic] knows how to make news and illuminate the personalities atop the judicial org chart . . . The book reveals unseen sausage-making . . ." —Wall Street Journal"Fascinating and informative . . . [Biskupic's] long experience covering the court . . . has put her in an incomparable position to comment on its make-up, historical positions and direction. It has also made her privy to many significant, little-known secrets about Supreme Court personalities and their historical behaviors." —The National Book ReviewCNN Senior Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic provides an urgent and inside look at the history-making era in the Supreme Court during the Trump and post-Trump years, from its seismic shift to the Right to its controversial decisions, including its reversal of Roe v. Wade, based on access to all the key players.Nine Black Robes displays the inner maneuverings among the Supreme Court justices that led to the seismic reversal of Roe v. Wade and a half century of women’s abortion rights. Biskupic details how rights are stripped away or, alternatively as in the case of gun owners, how rights are expanded. Today’s bench—with its conservative majority—is desperately ideological. The Court has been headed rightward and ensnared by its own intrigues for years, but the Trump appointments hastened the modern transformation. With unparalleled access to key players, Biskupic shows the tactics of each justice and reveals switched votes and internal pacts that typically never make the light of day, yet will have repercussions for generations to come.Nine Black Robes is the definitive narrative of the country’s highest court and its profound impact on all Americans.