Overview

In this long-awaited updated edition of Race & Liberty in America: The Essential Reader, editor Jonathan Bean presents the timeless and urgent insights classical liberalism has to offer our troubled and polarized time.

In 2009, when the first edition of Race & Liberty in America: The Essential Reader was published, there was a spirit of optimism surrounding race relations. 15 years later, and that spirit is fraught with tensions, many regrettably familiar and some new.

Which raises the question: what happened? And more importantly: how can we set things right?

With new contributions from Thomas Sowell, Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatteron Williams, Kenny Xu, David Bernstein, and Ilya Somin—as well as a plethora of primary source evidence from recent landmark US Supreme Court decisions—Bean champions the values of colorblindness, freedom, and equal constitutional protection for all individuals—regardless of race.

It’s a message that couldn’t be more timely.