(Basic Books) Review by Brian Tanguay Like many Americans, I saw the election of Barack Obama in 2008 as a long awaited turning point in race relations in this country.…
Tag: American History
The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
(Bloomsbury) Review by Brian Tanguay “False information need not be coherent to be effective, and the specters of vanished liberty and tyrannical government regulation are easy enough to conjure.” So…
I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction, by Kidada E. Williams
Blacks didn’t just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, they seized freedom and built homesteads, farms, churches, schools and communities; they tilled the soil and planted cash crops like…
How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
Review by Brian Tanguay As the controversy over the removal of Confederate monuments and tumult over critical race theory makes evident, American history is contentious and unsettled, with nostalgia and…
Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, From The Revolution to Reconstruction By Kate Masur
Review by Brian Tanguay Prior to reading Until Justice Be Done by Kate Masur, a historian who teaches at Northwestern University, I assumed that the critical period in the struggle…