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Guns R Us? Myths of a gun-toting people

Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture by Michael A. Bellesilles

In no other industrialized nation in the world are there so many gun deaths as in the United States. In Canada, a country otherwise so similar to the U.S., there were only 68 handgun deaths in 1990 and 128 in ’92. In 1994 the U.S. had 15,456 such deaths. More Americans are killed with guns in a typical week than in all of Western Europe in a year. To account for this enormous disparity, the myth was created that gun-toting was an early American tradition.

To Make Our World Anew, edited by Robin D. G. Kelly and Earl Lewis

This history of African Americans is a quintessentially American history. It presents the perspective of a people who have been among the most eloquent voices for and embodiments of America's cherished ideals of the essential liberty and equality of all people, the right to self-determination and the pursuit of happiness, the sanctity of individual life, and equality before the law. To Make Our World Anew can be read as a continuous narrative.

A tangled tale of race

One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race by Scott L. Malcomson

When Bill Clinton an­nounced that he would lead the nation in an unprecedented "conversation on race," the nation seemed to heave an exasperated sigh. Americans, after all, talk without ceasing about race. Welfare reform, affirmative action, the Murrah Federal Building, West Palm Beach--all these subjects have their racial dimension. Many white Americans, their racial concern worn to a smooth indifference, believe that race would go away if we talked about it less.