Anyone living in the United States copes with racism, the cruel legacy of slavery and the degree to which skin-color prejudice continues to affect our lives through politics, education, health care, law enforcement, and social traditions. This book looks at American racism as a caste system, similar to India’s caste system. An impeccable researcher and brilliant writer, Isabel Wilkerson draws on cultural, social, and personal histories to put America’s racism in a broader world context of prejudices based on physical characteristics. She uses the metaphor of disease to compare skin-color prejudice to pathogens. "“Human pathogens of hatred and tribalism in this evolving century, had never died. It lay in wait, sleeping, until extreme circumstances brought it to the surface and back to life,” she writes. Passed on from one generation to the next, skin-color prejudice, with white skin signifying the dominant, “superior” class, is embedded in society’s DNA, boosted by the heinous myth of white supremacy. “Caste is the infrastructure of our divisions. It is the architecture of human hierarchy, the subconscious code of instructions for maintaining, in our case, a four-hundred-year-old social order. Looking at caste is like holding the country’s X-ray up to the light.”
This is an important, serious book, but Wilkerson’s skilled writing style carries the reader along as if riding a long, relentless wave. There’s so much to learn, so much that was new to me. For example, I was horrified to learn that the Nazis studied Jim Crow laws and used them to organize their brutal campaign to exterminate Jews.
Caste is the most powerful book I’ve ever read about America’s racist system. It should be required reading in every high school and college in the United States.
THE TIME NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR | #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"Powerful and timely ... I cannot recommend it strongly enough" - Barack Obama
From one of America's most celebrated and insightful writers, the moving, eye-opening bestseller about what lies hidden under the surface of ordinary lives
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human…
As a science writer, I am excited when I read groundbreaking books. Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies does just that. Impeccably researched and beautifully written, it breaks new ground in our understanding of fathering. From her background as a primatologist, evolutionary anthropologist, mother, and grandmother, author Sarah Blaffer Hrdy presents a new perspective on men’s nurturing capacity that changes the traditional view of females as the exclusive nurturers of babies and men as hunter/protectors removed from the day to day duties caring for a baby. She also takes readers on her personal journey of discovery from noticing the involvement of her son-in-law caring for his first baby to the latest neuroscience demonstrating that men have a nurturing capacity triggered by close association with babies, bathing them , diapering them, holding them close as a mother would. “Under certain conditions men’s responses to babies actually become remarkably . . . maternal,” she writes. Investigating further. Hrdy learned that neuroscientists were finding that men who have prolonged physical contact with babies actually change biologically. They produce prolactin, the hormone that stimulates growth of the mammary glands and stimulates lactation in females. They also have higher levels of oxytocin, the hormone that stimulates contractions during labor, sexual arousal, and attachment or bonding between couples and between parents and babies. In effect, taking care of babies transforms men biologically. Hrdy traces the roots of men’s nurturing capacity back millions of years into our primate ancestry. She suggests that tapping into men’s ancient nurturing birthright could be key to less warlike, more caring societies not only for children and families, but for the planet.
A sweeping account of male nurturing, explaining how and why men are biologically transformed when they care for babies
It has long seemed self-evident that women care for babies and men do other things. Hasn't it always been so? When evolutionary science came along, it rubber-stamped this venerable division of labor: mammalian males evolved to compete for status and mates, while females were purpose-built to gestate, suckle, and otherwise nurture the victors' offspring. But come the twenty-first century, increasing numbers of men are tending babies, sometimes right from birth. How can this be happening? Puzzled and dazzled by the tender…
I enjoy novels that take on universal themes with compelling stories and unforgettable characters. Mr. Jimmy from Around the Way takes us on a journey of a powerful man’s fall from grace and his search for redemption. Frustrated by wounded love in a marriage he thought was perfect, black billionaire James Henry Ferguson commits an act that threatens to destroy all he holds dear. His search takes him away from his rich, comfortable life in Washington, D.C., to an impoverished, racially segregated rural community in Mississippi. There he sinks in depression over what he has lost and whether he can regain his self-esteem and redeem his soul. In the process of getting to know the people living in his community, which is called “around the way," he discovers there is much he can do through philanthropy to improve their living conditions and help them realize their own self worth. Blount’s masterful writing style brings a variety of characters, black and white, to life as they confront poverty, racism, and injustice together. In helping to heal a community, James discovers he can heal himself. This is a powerful story of sadness, struggle, and resolve. Be prepared to cry, laugh, and rejoice.
WINNER OF THE 2024 NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARD FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN FICTION AND OF THE 2024 NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARD IN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CATEGORY. FINALIST OF THE 2024 NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR LITERARY FICTION.
James Henry Ferguson doesn’t belong here.
After a highly publicized fall from grace, James attempts to flee from the chaos in his life. He ends up in a community he had never heard of before, one that has been neglected and ignored by everyone in rural Ham, Mississippi. A place of abject poverty, the neighborhood is commonly referred to as “Around the Way.”…
Nobody lives alone. From the thousands of bacteria that live in our gut, helping us digest our food, to the network of partnerships that make up our vast planetary ecosystem, living things have been coevolving—developing together—since the first organisms appeared on Earth some 3.6 to 3.8 billions of years ago. Coevolution—back and forth interactions among living things—is at the core nature of life. At every level, in every environment, life depends on getting along, cooperating with your neighbors, in many cases helping each other survive. In some cases the partnership is so tight, that one species could survive without the other. They have become perfect partners.
