Some Recommendations ...
Eric Alterman recommends Randall Kennedy's"Schooling in Equality". It's a review for TNR of Richard Kluger's Simple Justice and Michael Klarman's From Jim Crow to Civil Rights. I haven't read Klarman yet, but Kluger's book is just amazingly good, given the fact that he published it 30 years ago, so soon after the history it covered. It's great to have a new edition of it.
Liberty and Power's David Beito and Charles Nuckolls have a very provocative article,"Wrong Song of the South: The Dangerous Fallacies of Confederate Multiculturalism" at Reason. It was an excellent argument when Beito first blogged about it and it's even better as an article. In an interesting way, it plays the identity politics of the Right against the identity politics of the Left to expose the bankruptcy of both.
Hot button social issues aren't particularly good markers of the American Left and the American Right. There are simply too many evangelical feminists, gay Christians and Jews, and conservative African Americans to make it work. In any case,"One Is Enough" in Sunday's New York Times, an article about Amy Richards' decision to abort two of her triplets, provoked some very interesting discussions. See: HugoSchwyzer and Unfogged. Richards' story reminded me of Hannah Arendt's phrase about"the banality of evil."
I recommend Garry Kasparov's moving tribute to Bobby Fischer in the Wall Street Journal. It's hard to imagine that we will prosecute Fischer. His inner demons are torture enough.
Finally, just for fun, Manan Ahmed recommends"Dale Peck Reviews His Day" by Jeremy Richards.