The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly' Slate' Chronicle of Higher Education' Literary Hub, Book Riot' and Zora
A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller--"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education--with a new preface by the author
"It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system."
--Adam Shatz, London Review of Books
Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S."
Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.
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Community Reviews
It makes national news and we all get irate when a U.S. citizen goes to a foreign country, breaks the law, and ends up with an out of proportion punishment including things like beatings or solitary confinement. In our own country, our white kids get send to rehab for getting caught with pot, and our black kids get sent to jail, where they can end up getting beat by the guards and put in solitary confinement. That was the life of Kalief Browder, who spent 3 years in Rikers despite never having had a trial, finally being released when charges were dropped, only to commit suicide because he could never recover from the treatment he'd had as a child in prison. Why couldn't we get just as upset about his mistreatment as we could about Otto Warmbier, who knew he was doing something stupid and criminal in a totalitarian dictatorship.
Read this book and you will know why we need to break the mold and get rid of the completely racist, profit-driven system we have.
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