Product Description
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of Asian American participation in US politics. Written to be easily accessible to students, the book covers historical and cultural context, political behavior and attitudes, interest groups and parties, elected officials, and public policies that have an important impact on Asian Americans.

The role of identity provides an organizing theme which allows students to see connections between different aspects of Asian American politics. Andrew Aoki and Okiyoshi Takeda explain how the fate of Asian Americans has been powerfully influenced by the way they have been portrayed in the media, and more generally, in US society. Students are introduced to the “forever foreigner” image, which has helped to marginalise Asian Americans, and the “model minority” myth, which can give policymakers misleading impressions. The book also stresses how Asian Americans have worked to take control of their image and political fortunes. Students learn how the Asian American Movement helped to promote a “panethnic” identity which could strengthen Asian American political influence.

Asian American Politics is a lively and accessible introduction, ideal for students taking courses in race and politics.

For more information and resources visit the accompanying series website: www.politybooks.com/minoritypol

Product Description
This book is the authoritative introduction to the history ofblack civil rights in the USA. It provides a clear and useful guide tothe political, social and cultural history of black Americans andtheir pursuit of equal rights and recognition from 1865 through to thepresent day. From the civil war of the 1860s to the race riots of the1990s, Black Civil Rightsdetails the history of the moderncivil rights movement in American history.

This book introducesthe reader to:

* leading civil rights activists
* black political movements within the USA
* crucial legal and political developments
* portrayal of black Americans in the media. ... Read more

Product Description
Challenging the Civil Rights Establishment is a compelling introduction to the ideas of black social critics who oppose the most prominent voices of black America's leadership. In their analysis, Conti and Stetson focus on four men: Thomas Sowell, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; Shelby Steele, author of The Content of Our Character; Robert Woodson, founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise; and Glenn Loury, a conservative political economist at Boston University. In speeches, in their writings, and in interviews with Conti and Stetson, these thinkers discuss how the construction of public policy has devolved into a kind of "ethnic cheerleading" that exalts race and ethnicity above personal character and behaviors in determinations of what is fair. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Who says there are no more heroes and heroines!
All the post-riot stories about South Central have been filtered through a screen of what might be termed, "black political correctness."Facts, ideas, and research don't coincide with the so-called "official story" of the "causes" of the riots.What ever happened to the real story?Were commentators and journalists afraid to be tagged, "racially insensitive?"Did they collaborate in this "official story" with the civil rights establishment?Did they want to avoid the fall out from the explosive truth or capitalize on the political deception? What truth?The truth about the vicious character of the blacks, hispanics, and whites that looted and burned South Central Los Angeles.Who am I to say these things?I lived there.I was there when the smoke was so thick and heavy, it hung only a few feet above the ground. The heroes and heroines of the black conservative movement, however, were not deceived.Even before the Fairmont Conference when black conservatism became a forceful movment, these lions and lionesses had shaken off the deceiving and terrifying grip of the civil rights establishment.Long before the black community began to find courage to join together and move against their false prophets, the new black vanguard had individually crossed over the Jordan river. Who are these heroes and heroines?Phyllis Berry-Myers, Joseph Broadus, Ezola Foster, Alan Keyes, Glenn Loury, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Lee Walker, Walter Williams, Robert Woodson, Anne Wortham, and Elizabeth Wright among others.These are many of the same people who havenow come together to voice their insight and vision in their own words within the drama of "Black and Right: The Bold New Voice of Black Conservatives in America" (Praeger Trade, 1997)! In "Challenging the Civil Rights Establishment: Profiles of a New Black Vanguard" (Praeger Trade, 1993) Joseph G. Conti and Brad Stetson (assisted by Stan Faryna) thoughtfully describe the thought, experience, and contribution of many of these lions and lionesses.Wrote Conti and Stetson of the black conservative message: "It is a message of self-reliance, in the context of a dignified community, trusting its own ability to exercise freedom with responsbility and thereby provide for itself the moral and social resources that breed and sustain independence." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A wonderful and detailed history
As someone who has researched and studied the civil rights movement, I was impressed and moved byJ. Mills Thornton's rich examination of how a movement that changed America sprang forth in three key cities - Montgomery, Alabama (my home town), Birmingham, and Selma. The famous dictum that 'all politics is local' has never read more true. What Thornton does is take the reader inside the world of local politics, re-introducing the readers to the importance of what may seem like small, local decissions, and how even one city commission election can change the course of history for a nation. This book stands with Carry Me Home, Parting the Waters, and Pillar of Fire as essential reading for those who truely want to understand our all too recent history of race, discrimination, and civil rights. While the text of the book is 583 pages (before notes and a detailed index), it is a worthy and enlightening read. Once read, I doubt anyone will miss voting in a local election again. ... Read more

Product Description
Shipwrecked sailors, samurai seeking a material and sometimes spiritual education, and laborers seeking to better their economic situation: these early Japanese travelers to the West occupy a little-known corner of Asian American studies. "Pacific Pioneers" profiles the first Japanese who resided in the United States or the Kingdom of Hawaii for a substantial period of time and the Westerners who influenced their experiences. Although Japanese immigrants did not start arriving in substantial numbers in the West until after 1880, in the previous thirty years a handful of key encounters helped shape relations between Japan and the United States. John E. Van Sant explores the motivations and accomplishments of these resourceful, sometimes visionary individuals who made important inroads into a culture quite different from their own and paved the way for the Issei and Nisei. "Pacific Pioneers" presents detailed biographical sketches of Japanese such as Joseph Heco, Niijima Jo, and the converts to the Brotherhood of the New Life and introduces the American benefactors, such as William Griffis, David Murray, and Thomas Lake Harris, who built relationships with their foreign visitors.Van Sant also examines the uneasy relations between Japanese laborers and sugar cane plantation magnates in Hawaii during this period and the short-lived Wakamatsu colony of Japanese tea and silk producers in California. A valuable addition to the literature, "Pacific Pioneers" brings to life a cast of colorful, long-forgotten characters while forging a critical link between Asian and Asian American studies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Marvelous Read
Everyone who loves history or just likes a good story will enjoy this book. Dr. Van Sant has created a broad collective report of the Japanese settlers that is built upon the stories of individuals. Overall, it is insightful, informative, educational, and entertaining. A fascinating book on an often ignored topic.

George Robbins

Mutual comprehension -- sort of
Between 1853, when the United States began pressuring Japan to open itself to outside commerce, and the late 19th century, when Japanese laborers began moving to Hawaii and America on a large scale, a tiny band of Japanese acted - consciously or not - as the first reporters of fact and opinion about America to Japan.
John Van Sant, professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi at the time this book was written, estimates the total of Japanese sojourners between 1850 and 1880 at no more than 900. They were divided about equally between students come to learn western ways, diplomats and merchants on business trips.
One of the very first, however, was a teen-age fisherman, whose boat was blown into the Pacific, where the crew was rescued by an American ship.
The boy, who eventually became an American citizen and used the name Joseph Heco, was adopted by kindly Americans in San Francisco, who saw to his education in the older states. (Missionaries had a large part as intermediaries in the first contacts between Americans and Japanese, and the missionaries also had connections with Rutgers, which explains why that New Jersey school attracted so many early Japanese students.)
Heco, an attractive personality and evidently a bright boy, eventually returned to Japan. It was still against the law to be a Christian, so he kept his conversion quiet.
Van Sant, using letters and Heco's two memoirs, shows how the boy adopted a wide range of American ideas and habits, from business practices to the racial opinions of his age.
While many Japanese sojourners either felt an obligation to help introduce the two cultures to each other, or saw personal advantages in doing so, Heco seems to have been more or less indifferent to the big picture. He used his language skills and overseas contacts in business, but soon quit working with either government.
According to Van Sant, toward the end of his life, Heco was dissatisfied with the changes western contact was creating in Japan.
What the Japanese saw was nothing like an adequate sampling of American life and institutions. For a while, for example, the largest single group of Japanese in the United States comprised the "Wakamatsu Colony" in Coloma, Calif., which was organized by a German businessman. Later a large number of Japanese students joined the Brotherhood of the New Life commune led by the messianic Thomas Lake Harris.
Immigrant colonies and messianic religious establishments were common throughout 19th century America, but neither could be said to represent the mainstream.
Van Sant has less to say about the early Japanese in Hawaii, but he refutes claims made 130 years ago (and repeated by some scholars today) that Japanese immigrant laborers on the sugar plantations were exploited and were "virtual slaves."
Like Heco, the laborers who came in large numbers were humble folk, and Japan offered them a hard existence and no chance for improvement. In Hawaii, they made $4 a month, plus housing, food and medical care. That was at least double what any of them could have had at home.
"Pacific Pioneers" is thin on the diplomatic component of the migration, but the surviving documents are spotty. Only a few Japanese sojourners, like Heco and the Christian missionary Niijama Jo, left masses of documents to analyze.
Van Sant points out that in 1850, Americans knew almost nothing of Japan. "Between 1850 and 1880 most Americans viewed Japanese as eager students of Westernization and members of a hard-working 'model-minority.' Yet at the end of the Issei era of immigration in 1924, this once-positive (albeit paternalistic) image of Japanese had been transformed into a negative one: a new 'yellow peril.' "
Van Sant offers only a brief epilogue to explain how that happened, but he argues persuasively that an understanding of just what the two cultures first learned about each other is a necessary background to understanding later bleak developments.

Excellent History. Excellent Read...
John Van Sant, a professor of Japanese History at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, has written an approachable and engaging look back at some of the very first Japanese travelers to the United States in the mid to late 1800s.

For the student of Asian-American History or Early Modern Asian Japanese History, Pacific Pioneers, is an invaluable reference that bridges the gap between the broad view of early Japan-U.S. interaction and the Japanese political reaction to it. Many of the popular books that deal with this area of history are concerned with its larger events such as the Perry and Iwakura Missions.

Van Sant's book is about individuals who came to a foreign land, and were instrumental in defining how the Western world viewed a recently opened island nation. Van Sant's scholarship is through and compiles a great deal of information that is often lost in the larger events of the period.Even those who aren't interested in Asian or Asian-American History can appreciate the people Van Sant has researched for their sense of wonder and discovery as some of the first to leave their homeland, which was closed off to nearly all foreign intercourse for over 200 years.

I find the book especially engaging because it examines how Americans reacted to their foreign visitors during a time when man of today's stereotypes about the Japanese culture had not been developed. Also, by examining the way in which the New World was viewed by the Japanese visitors, the reader can see how foreigners reacted to the Western world and found their culture to be exotic, captivating, and at times, frightening. The book is a revealing and honest look at how different cultures are viewed by people that were truly foreign to them.

A book I recommend for anyone who is interested in history on a very personal and revealing level.

A little-explored corner of American history
This is a truly absorbing read.Author John Van Sant casts light on a little-explored corner of American history about which, I'm willing to bet, few readers have any knowledge at all.Some may be vaguely aware that a handful of shipwrecked Japanese sailors fetched up on American shores in the first half of the nineteenth century or that large Japanese embassies toured this country in 1860 and 1871-72.But how many know that scores of Japanese students were living in such an unlikely place as New Brunswick, New Jersey in the late 1860s and 1870s, studying about American institutions as well as "big guns" and "big ships."Or that several young Japanese aristocrats--including a later titan of Meiji Japan--were holed up in a utopian commune, under the watchful eye of an eccentric guru, doing housework and tending grapevines?Or that other countrymen and women of less elevated status, fleeing worsening economic conditions back home, were scraping out a bare living in Hawaii and northern California?

In clear economic prose, thankfully free of academic jargon, Van Sant explores each of these expatriate communities in some depth.(Oddly enough, the author makes no mention whatsoever of the troupes of Japanese entertainers criss-crossing the country during this same period.Even Mark Twain complained bitterly in 1867 about having to compete with a company of Japanese acrobats for an audience.)He also does the historical record a considerable service by freeing some of these pioneers--the "mysterious" Wakamatsu Colony of Gold Hill, California being a prime example--from an encrustation of myth.If I have any quibble at all with Pacific Pioneers, it is that it is too short.Highly recommended!

A Must Read
I think that Dr Van Sant tells a compelling tale of the first wave of Japanese settlers who came to the United States and Hawaii. This book is for anybody who is interested in Asian American History. It should be the first book cracked open for any student who signs up to take any Asian studies class, either in the undergraduate or post-graduate world.I loved it. ... Read more

Product Description
Does "Asian American" denote an ethnic or racial identification? Is a person of mixed ancestry, the child of Euro- and Asian American parents, Asian American? What does it mean to refer to first generation Hmong refugees and fifth generation Chinese Americans both as Asian American?

In Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation State, Robert Chang examines the current discourse on race and law and the implications of postmodern theory and affirmative action-all of which have largely excluded Asian Americans-in order to develop a theory of critical Asian American legal studies.

Demonstrating that the ongoing debate surrounding multiculturalism and immigration in the U.S. is really a struggle over the meaning of "America," Chang reveals how the construction of Asian American-ness has become a necessary component in stabilizing a national American identity-- a fact Chang criticizes as harmful to Asian Americans. Defining the many "borders" that operate in positive and negative ways to construct America as we know it, Chang analyzes the position of Asian Americans within America's black/white racial paradigm, how "the family" operates as a stand-in for race and nation, and how the figure of the immigrant embodies a central contradiction in allegories of America.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Dazed and Confused
This guy doesn't know the difference between a philosopher and a filafel.Anyone with a glimmer of a formal training in philosophy would know it.He uses some philosophers' names to prove the most mundane of points that require no citation at all while using others with the deft of a second year graduate student.

"Disoriented"?You bet.

Brilliant
Having come from a similar background as an Asian-American in the field of law, I can relate well to many of the experiences highlighted in the text.This work accurately describes the intricate philosophies and commonexperiences held by many Asian-Americans, thus allowing vital insight intoa often misconstrued culture.It represents a fresh look into thisimportant segment of the American society.The text flowed well andcovered a broad range of stimulating issues.A very satisfying read.

Thoughtful and perceptive
I really enjoyed this book, and thought it was accessible (I read it in a couple days), at times humorous, and smart.It contains multiple essays on law and Asian America, one of which is a thought-provoking discussion ofthe place/placing of Asian Americans in the Affirmative Action debate,particularly for those of us who are used to looking at affirmative actionthrough a different racial/ethnic lens.I am very impressed with thisauthor.

Thoughtful and perceptive
I really enjoyed this book, and thought it was accessible (I read it in a couple days), at times humorous, and smart.It contains multiple essays on law and Asian America, one of which is a thought-provoking discussion ofthe place/placing of Asian Americans in the Affirmative Action debate,particularly for those of us who are used to looking at affirmative actionthrough a different racial/ethnic lens.I am very impressed with thisauthor.

a must buy!
This book is superbly written and a timely, vital, and necessary intervention.A foundational contribution to the as yet all too limited field of Asian American jurisprudence.Kudos to the author. ... Read more

Product Description
The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in large measure because of rhetorical appeals grounded in the Judeo-Christian religion. While movement leaders often used America's founding documents and ideals to depict Jim Crow's contradictory ways, the language and lessons of both the Old and New Testaments were often brought to bear on many civil rights events and issues, from local desegregation to national policy matters. This volume chronicles how national movement leaders and local activists moved a nation to live up to the Biblical ideals it often professed but infrequently practiced. ... Read more

Product Description
"Asian Americans are emerging as a political force and yet their politics have not been systematically studied by either social scientists or politicians. Asian American politics transcend simple questions of voting behavior and elective office, going all the way back to early immigration laws and all the way forward to ethnic targeting. For the first time, this book brings together original sources on key topics influencing Asian American politics, knit together by expert scholars who introduce each subject and place it in context with political events and the greater emerging literature. Court cases, legislation, demographics, and key pieces on topics ranging from gender to Japanese American redress to the Los Angeles riots to Wen Ho Lee round out this innovative reader on a politically active group likely to grow in number and electoral impact." ... Read more

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"The bigger story is that redress is a triumph for all Americans, giving us the heart to pursue other ideals."--from the Foreword by Chizu OmoriWhen President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans could finally claim redress from the government that had violated their constitutional rights during World War II. Films and books have explored the appalling circumstances of these 120,000 Japanese immigrants and their families, twothirds of whom were American citizens, incarcerated in ten camps situated in eight western states from 1942 until 1946.What is not commonly known is that the roots of redress began to take shape with a few second-generation Japanese American engineers at the Boeing Company in Seattle in the late 1960s. Tired of being disregarded by their hakujin (white) colleagues, they decided to change the perception that most Americans had of hardworking, silent Asians. Their decision coincided with the opening of a 1970 museum exhibit in Seattle that examined the history of Japanese Americans in the Northwest, depicting in compelling images the consequences of Executive Order 9066. From these initially unrelated circumstances a movement was born that involved national organizations and eventually gained congressional attention in the 1980s. Robert Sadamu Shimabukuro has constructed a very personal testimony from hundreds of interviews with those who lived in the wartime camps and with those who initiated the campaign to seek a public apology from the United States government. ... Read more

Product Description
With California's passage of the Save Our State Initiative in 1994, fear of aliens has once again appeared in U.S. legislative history. Since 1790, congressional legislation on federal immigration and naturalization policy has been harsh on Asian immigrants, although less so since 1965. This documentary history covers all major immigration laws passed by Congress since 1790. The volume opens with an overview of the basis on which Congress has restricted Asian immigration. It then includes discussions of particular immigration legislation, showing the significance to Asian Americans and the documents themselves. ... Read more

Product Description
Covering the past 150 years, this documentary history critiques major Supreme Court decisions on litigations that Asian Americans brought before the Court. Separate sections written by contributing scholars focus on cases pertaining to the question of the government's right to exclude, expel, or deport persons of Asian ancestry, the constitutional question of U.S. citizenship for persons of Asian ancestry, the alien laws of California and Washington, and Japanese internment. A seventh section casts the problem of denying Asian Americans their constitutional rights within the framework of Asian American "foreignness" as viewed by white America. The final chapter reviews major immigration laws passed by Congress in the 20th century and discusses the implications of the Immigration Act of 1990. The volume concludes with a case, name, and subject index. ... Read more

Product Description
The Chinese began to emigrate to the United States in significant numbers at the time of the California Gold Rush. By 1880 some 100,000 Chinese immigrants were living in this country, the vast majority in California. In that state and in other western states they encountered severe hostility, manifested in numberous racially discriminatroy state laws. The articles and essays in this volume examine the law's impact on the Chinese immigrant community and their response to racial discrimination. ... Read more

Product Description
Once thought of in terms of geographically bounded spaces, Asian America has undergone profound changes as a result of post-1965 immigration as well as the growth and reshaping of established communities. This collection of original essays demonstrates that conventional notions of community, of ethnic enclaves determined by exclusion and ghettoization, now have limited use in explaining the dynamic processes of contemporary community formation.

Writing from a variety of perspectives, these contributors expand the concept of community to include sites not necessarily bounded by space; formations around gender, class, sexuality, and generation reveal new processes as well as the demographic diversity of today's Asian American population. The case studies gathered here speak to the fluidity of these communities and to the need for new analytic approaches to account for the similarities and differences between them. Taken together, these essays forcefully argue that it is time to replace the outworn concept of a monolithic Asian America. ... Read more

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Since many Japanese immigrants focused on agriculture, California and other western states sought to discourage their presense by passing laws making it impossible for Japanese to own agricultural land and enacted other discriminatory as well. The articles in this volume explore the background and ramifications of the so-called Alien Land laws and other anti-Japanese measures and the fascinating legal challenges that ensued. ... Read more

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This book comes at a critical time in the history of South Asians in North America. As the number of South Asian immigrants increases in the United States and Canada, a familiar tension has been the immigrant conflict between home as a physical site in North America and home as an emotional concept tied to the ancestral country, and the second generation's questioning of both notions. This anthology critically explores this familiar tension and the concept of "home." It focuses on the transformative experiences that lead individuals to declare or reject new forms of belonging in North America. Setting up "home" may require contesting existing roles, inventing hybrid identities, or seeking social and political change.

The anthology challenges undifferentiated, stereotypical images of South Asians in North America, portraying instead the subtleties of their varied, sometimes invisible experiences. It includes fiction, poetry, essays, and photography.Amazon.com Review
The poems, stories, photographs, and essays in the American BookAward-winning anthology Contours of the Heart speak to almost everyaspect of the South Asian experience in North America. These diverse voicesmap their own New World, rendering in quirky detail the complexities andironies of living in two places at the same time. The bride of an arrangedmarriage finds a letter from her husband's male lover and consoles herselfby chanting the names of familiar spices, first in English, then in Hindi;two "Indian" women--one a Zoroastrian Gujarati, the other a YupikEskimo--forge powerful bonds despite their cultural differences; thedaughter of a famous Indian American guru accidentally blows her mother'slavish ashram into smithereens, but insists "I was just a good daughter.Like all of us, I guess." Throughout this anthology, South Asians engage inan ongoing dialogue between different notions of homeland and exile,personal identity and familial duty. In the end, many find that they arenot forced to choose between South Asian and North American cultures--thatthey can instead create their own culture, one that values its heritage yetis vibrant and new. In her poem "We the Indian Women in America," forexample, Chitra Banerjee Divarkaruni writes, "And what we want is this: forus and our daughters, / India and America, / the best of bothtogether. If you tell us we cannot have / it, we refuse to believe you (forwe have learned / to say no)...." Despite the horrid academese of theeditors' introduction, Contours of the Heart is a fascinating andlively document, its very diversity providing the best possible antidote tocultural stereotypes. ... Read more

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While a decade of national prosperity has largely left African Americans behind, this book takes a look at the causes of black economic oppression and offers challenging steps to overcome this problem. Rather than relying on a victim's mentality, this book addresses the reasons why African Americans earn over $530 billion, yet spend less than 3 percent with black-owned business. Also discussed are black churches and organizations and their failure to be economic leaders in their communities. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Saving Black America: Economic Civil Rights
I was please with the product. It was timely delivered, and it was in good condition.
JC.

Not only identifies problems, it also offers solutions
In Saving Black America: An Economic Plan For Civil Rights, consultant, educator, and civil rights leader John Odom addresses the very real issues of poverty and finance that directly affect millions of African-Americans today. Focusing in turns on the dilemma of whether Civil Rights organizations can accept donations from predominantly white foundations and remain focused on liberation strategies, why and how one third of African-Americans today live below the poverty line and what should be done about it, and much more. An absolute must-read for every American civil rights activist, Saving Black America not only identifies problems, it also offers solutions and blueprints to put in action for a better tomorrow. ... Read more

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Barkan's analysis of contemporary Asian and Pacific Islander immigration to the United States offers an up-to-date synthesis of data about global migration today. It presents a series of principles regarding new double-step patterns in populations movements across a rimless world at the end of the 20th century. This unique study examines world migration theory, a fourth wave of immigration to the United States since the 1960s, factors that affect peoples' decisions to migrate, their adjustment to new communities and their impact on them, and their deliberations about returning to their original homelands. ... Read more

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In 1942 U.S. military authorities, invoking a presidential order and an Act of Congress, forcibly evacuated over 110,000 persons of Japnese ancestry, most of them U/S. citizens, from their homes on the West Coast to what in fact were prison camps inland. The essays and articles in this volume explore this most extraordinary episode in American constitutional history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Possibly a Greater Work than Justice at War
This book is exceptional in terms of quality.The essays in The Mass Internment vary by time.Some are from the 1940s, while others are contemoraneous to the books publication date.The actual articles are incredibly valuable to the internment scholar.Many books are excellent social histories of the event, but few aside from Peter Irons have chronicled the legal and politcal history of the internment in such as manner as the articles in this work.Utilizing vast amounts of government documents, in addition to other secondary sources, these articles succeed in present varying accounts of the intenment while maintaining a high level of excellence.Well worth the price. ... Read more

Product Description
There are few Americans who would not recognize Charles Moore's most famous photographs. His images of the civil rights movement have become, and remain today, internationally known icons - vivid, scaring portraits of pivotal moments in the struggle for racial equality in the American South. This chronological collection of Moore's most compelling and dramatic images, taken as the movement progressed through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia, highlights activity from 1958 to 1965. Included are the iconic scenes of black protestors huddled in a doorway to escape the crippling blasts of fire hoses in Birmingham; a white bigot swinging a baseball bat seconds before cracking it on the head of a black woman during the desegregation of the Capitol Cafeteria in Montgomery; a young and stunned Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pinned to the counter of a police precinct, his arm twisted behind his back; the devastating aftermath of "Bloody Sunday" on the Edmund Pertus Bridge in Selma; and Bull Connor's police dogs tearing mercilessly at the legs of a protestor in downtown Birmingham.Celebrity protestors - comedian Dick Gregory, poet Galway Kinnell, singers Joan Baez, Mary Travers, Pete Seeger, and Harry Bellafonte, actor Pernell Roberts, and writer James Baldwin - are featured alongside the many nameless but committed participants and the recognized major leaders of the movement. Powerful Days was first published in hardcover in 1991. This new paperback edition will make these famous images, so etched in the memory of those who lived through the social changes of the 1960s, available again to enlighten a younger generation eager to know more about the national struggle that overthrew Jim Crow. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Powerful Indeed
As per the title of the book, powerful photographs indeed of events during the Civil Rights era - riots at Oxford in Mississippi, Birmingham demonstrations, voter registration in Mississippi. It is definitely photojournalism at it's most prosaic. It also illustrates the power of photos as these were scene around the world.

The Civil Rights era used journalists to advertise this most righteous of causes. It would have been nice if there had been more text by the photographer himself - on his personal thoughts as these photos were being taken.

Powerful Days:The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore
This was a purchase of a second-hand book of photography which is out of print. The book was represented to be in good condition and when I rec'd it, I was exceptionally pleased.

Timely, and in good condition...
This is a classic book of black & white photographs of highly-charged, historic moments of the Civil Rights struggle. Since Charles Moore died recently, I chose this book as a gift to a friend who was retiring and had been involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He was delighted. The book was in perfect condition except for the library pocket. I wonder why ANY library would want to get rid of it! Bad move! My gain!

Powerful Days brings powerful images
Charles Moore was there. He witnessed the events of Selma, Birmingham, and Montgomery. His camera captures the struggle at close range, in all its glory, drama, and tragedy. Charles Moore does a fantastic job of showing how the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was a series of historic events that took place throughout the South, connected by common themes: justice, fairness, humanity, dignity,and ultimately...love.

Stunning photographs--as history and art
It's great to see this book back in print!Moore was one of the most famous photographers of the civil rights movement, and chronicled the people and events in images that have become iconic-- from the exhausted, wounded US marshall assigned to protect James Meredith to the brutality of Birmingham to the quiet pride of the voter registration efforts. The book presents Moore's black-and-white photos in gorgeous, sharp, usually full-page view (some, however, cross the page), and he had an unbelievable talent for catching the expressions and individual moments that really make this history come alive.These photos are works of art as well as historical documents, sometimes difficult to look at, but unforgettable.A very good introduction gives Moore's own words describing some of his experiences with the movement, and clear captions place each picture in historical context.This is a book I've found myself returning to over and over again; I can't imagine anyone interested in the civil rights movement or photojournalism who would regret buying it. ... Read more