The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Michelle Alexander shows how you can change a system politically and legally, but without ever destroying its social roots. Racial domination in the United States has always found a way of coming back to life, despite legal changes… It is probably the most important book on prisons since Foucault’s Discipline and Punish in 1975. It proves that you can win the judicial battle, change the legal order and still lose the political one.” Read more...

The best books on State

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Philosopher

“The new Jim Crow that Michelle Alexander is talking about is mass incarceration.” Read more...

Peter Temin on An Economic Historian’s Favourite Books

Peter Temin, Economist

“Today, according to Alexander, although we have a purportedly colourblind society, the same thing is happening. But today it is done by imposing differentiated citizenship rights on convicted felons.” Read more...

The best books on Race and the Law

Kenneth W. Mack, Historian

The New Jim Crow, by civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander, was an incredibly important book, first published in 2010. There’s now a 10th anniversary edition, with (according to the publisher, The New Press) “a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.”

New Editions & Translations