Recent & relevant history books

Sex and politics are here to stay, and the more you scratch their surfaces, the more demons you unleash. Race is no different. As scholar C. Eric Lincoln says in his latest book, Coming Through the Fire: Surviving Race and Place in America (Duke University Press, 1996), "The first consciousness of race comes early. It is not something you learn in the same way you learn about stinging caterpillars or poison ivy. You do not have to learn it from some overt experience. It is a pervasive awareness, an insidious thing that seeps into the soil of consciousness, sending its toxic tendrils deep into the walls of the mind. It is like a mold, a blight. If you scrape it away here, you find it mockingly virulent there. Once the concept of race takes root in the mind, it is there to stay. You cannot run away from it because it is inside you."

Scratch the surface of your local bookstore or library, and you'll find that many books released in the last year are noteworthy for their study of black history and many of them have made new discoveries in the areas of race relations. Consequently, they re-examine what it means to be black in America.

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