Class Notes: Posing As Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene

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Hailed by Publishers Weekly for its forceful and bracing opinions on race and politics, Class Notes is critic Adolph Reed Jr.s latest blast of clear thinking on matters of race, class, and other American dilemmas. The book begins with a consideration of the theoretical and practical strategies of the U.S. left over the last three decades: Reed argues against the solipsistic approaches of cultural or identity politics, and in favor of class-based political interpretation and action.

Class Notes moves on to tackle race relations, ethnic studies, family values, welfare reform, the so-called underclass, and black public intellectuals in essays called head-spinning and brilliantly executed by David Levering Lewis.

Adolph Reed Jr. has earned a national reputation for his controversial evaluations of American politics. These essays illustrate why people like Katha Pollitt consider Reed the smartest person of any race, class, or gender writing on race, class, and gender.

Reviews

"Everything [Reed] writes is informed by a strong historical memory of a time when there was a Movement and when the distance between rhetoric and conviction was much less than it is now." Christopher Hitchens, The New York Times Book Review

"Class Notes sparkles with wit and wisdom. Reeds essay on the political and intellectual left since the 1960s is the best analysis of American radicalism in print." Judith Stein, professor of history, The City University of New York

"Provocative." Booklist

"Opening Adolph Reeds Class Notes is like boarding a roller coaster. What follows is an opinionated, headspinning loop, brilliantly executed, through the controversies of the recent past and immediate future. I strongly recommend taking the ride." David Levering Lewis, author of W. E. B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 18681919, winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in Biography

"Brutally frank. . . . This book is definitely not your fathers old mobilization rhetoric." Bill Quigley, professor of law, Loyola University

Author Bio

Adolph Reed Jr. is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the editor of Race, Politics, and Culture and Without Justice for All and the author of The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon, W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought, and Stirrings in the Jug.