Once in a great at the same time as a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is this type of book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as “brave and bold,” this book immediately challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that “we have not ended racial caste in The us; we have merely redesigned it.” By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a latest system of racial keep watch over—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—at the same time as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a “call to action.”

Called “stunning” by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, “invaluable” by the Daily Kos, “explosive” by Kirkus, and “profoundly necessary” by the Miami Herald, this up to date and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a should-read for all people of moral sense.