The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Paperback)
March 2010 Indie Next List
“In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander tirelessly researches both the legal history of America's Jim Crow past and the current legal policies that contribute to the mass incarceration of black people. The text adds significantly to scholarship that contextualizes rates of incarceration among blacks and critiques of social and economic inequality.”
— Bruce Smith, Colorado State University Bookstore, Fort Collins, CO
Staff Reviews
The New Jim Crow is an essential read for understanding the racial caste system that is the United States, especially in how capitalism drives this phenomenon. In this well-researched book, Alexander shows us how we as a nation have redesigned Jim Crow to fit the colorblind demands of the modern age. This system takes the form of mass incarceration, where millions of people enter into the penal system, are labled felons, and are then legally discriminated against in areas such as voting, housing, jobs, and more, ensuring a feedback loop of poverty.
The New Jim Crow is not only a highly informative book, but it is well-written, digestible, and overall easy-to-read. Get it now!
- Clarisse
— From ClarisseNamed one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly' Slate' Chronicle of Higher Education' Literary Hub, Book Riot' and Zora
A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller--"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education--with a new preface by the author
"It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system."
--Adam Shatz, London Review of Books
Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S."
Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.