"Few foreign policy issues have aroused as much passion in Iran as a 1964 Iranian law granting US military personnel diplomatic immunity. Denounced by Ayatollah Khomeini as a throwback to the hated capitulations of the nineteenth century that had been terminated by Iran in 1928, it led to his exile to Iraq, from where he led the eventually victorious religious opposition against the last Shah. The author puts this law and the subsequent exchange of notes between the United States and Iran in historical context. He uses hitherto unutilized primary sources, including interviews with American witnesses to probe the legal issues involved and provide a sober analysis of their consequences on the ground. In so doing he strips away decades of impassioned if not always accurate rhetoric, affording us what bids fair to become the definitive study of US privileges and immunities in Iran"--Provided by publisher.

A deep and thought-provoking examination of crisis politics and their implications for power and marginalization in the United States. From the climate crisis to the opioid crisis to the Coronavirus crisis, the language of crisis is everywhere around us and ubiquitous in contemporary American politics and policymaking. But for every problem that political actors describe as a crisis, there are myriad other equally serious ones that are not described in this way. Why has the term crisis been associated with some problems but not others? What has crisis come to mean, and what work does it do? In When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People, Dara Z. Strolovitch brings a critical eye to the taken-for-granted political vernacular of crisis. Using systematic analyses to trace the evolution of the use of the term crisis by both political elites and outsiders, Strolovitch unpacks the idea of “crisis” in contemporary politics and demonstrates that crisis is itself an operation of politics. She shows that racial justice activists innovated the language of crisis in an effort to transform racism from something understood as natural and intractable and to cast it instead as a policy problem that could be remedied. Dominant political actors later seized on the language of crisis to compel the use of state power, but often in ways that compounded rather than alleviated inequality and injustice. In this eye-opening and important book, Strolovitch demonstrates that understanding crisis politics is key to understanding the politics of racial, gender, and class inequalities in the early twenty-first century.

Winner, 2019 William J. Goode Book Award, given by the Family Section of the American Sociological Association Finalist, 2019 C. Wright Mills Award, given by the Society for the Study of Social Problems Riveting stories of how affluent, white children learn about race American kids are living in a world of ongoing public debates about race, daily displays of racial injustice, and for some, an increased awareness surrounding diversity and inclusion. In this heated context, sociologist Margaret A. Hagerman zeroes in on affluent, white kids to observe how they make sense of privilege, unequal educational opportunities, and police violence. In fascinating detail, Hagerman considers the role that they and their families play in the reproduction of racism and racial inequality in America. White Kids, based on two years of research involving in-depth interviews with white kids and their families, is a clear-eyed and sometimes shocking account of how white kids learn about race. In doing so, this book explores questions such as, “How do white kids learn about race when they grow up in families that do not talk openly about race or acknowledge its impact?” and “What about children growing up in families with parents who consider themselves to be ‘anti-racist’?” Featuring the actual voices of young, affluent white kids and what they think about race, racism, inequality, and privilege, White Kids illuminates how white racial socialization is much more dynamic, complex, and varied than previously recognized. It is a process that stretches beyond white parents’ explicit conversations with their white children and includes not only the choices parents make about neighborhoods, schools, peer groups, extracurricular activities, and media, but also the choices made by the kids themselves. By interviewing kids who are growing up in different racial contexts—from racially segregated to meaningfully integrated and from politically progressive to conservative—this important book documents key differences in the outcomes of white racial socialization across families. And by observing families in their everyday lives, this book explores the extent to which white families, even those with anti-racist intentions, reproduce and reinforce the forms of inequality they say they reject.

This fascinating story of Amanda America Dickson, born the privileged daughter of a white planter and an unconsenting slave in antebellum Georgia, shows how strong-willed individuals defied racial strictures for the sake of family. Kent Anderson Leslie uses the events of Dickson's life to explore the forces driving southern race and gender relations from the days of King Cotton through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and New South eras. Although legally a slave herself well into her adolescence, Dickson was much favored by her father and lived comfortably in his house, receiving a genteel upbringing and education. After her father died in 1885 Dickson inherited most of his half-million dollar estate, sparking off two years of legal battles with white relatives. When the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the will, Dickson became the largest landowner in Hancock County, Georgia, and the wealthiest black woman in the post-Civil War South. Kent Anderson Leslie's portrayal of Dickson is enhanced by a wealth of details about plantation life; the elaborate codes of behavior for men and women, blacks and whites in the South; and the equally complicated circumstances under which racial transgressions were sometimes ignored, tolerated, or even accepted.

An NPR Favorite Book of the Year “Breaks new ground on social and educational questions of great import.” —Washington Post “An essential work, humane and candid, that challenges and expands our understanding of the lives of contemporary college students.” —Paul Tough, author of Helping Children Succeed “Eye-opening...Brings home the pain and reality of on-campus poverty and puts the blame squarely on elite institutions.” —Washington Post “Jack’s investigation redirects attention from the matter of access to the matter of inclusion...His book challenges universities to support the diversity they indulge in advertising.” —New Yorker The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In this bracing exposé, Anthony Jack shows that many students’ struggles continue long after they’ve settled in their dorms. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This powerfully argued book documents how university policies and campus culture can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why some students are harder hit than others.

The winner of the 2004 W.E.B. DuBois Book Award, NCOBPS and the2004 Michael Harrington Award "for an outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the struggle for a better world."

This groundbreaking history of African Americans and golf explores the role of race, class, and public space in golf course development, the stories of individual black golfers during the age of segregation, the legal battle to integrate public golf courses, and the little-known history of the United Golfers Association (UGA)--a black golf tour that operated from 1925 to 1975. Lane Demas charts how African Americans nationwide organized social campaigns, filed lawsuits, and went to jail in order to desegregate courses; he also provides dramatic stories of golfers who boldly confronted wider segregation more broadly in their local communities. As national civil rights organizations debated golf’s symbolism and whether or not to pursue the game’s integration, black players and caddies took matters into their own hands and helped shape its subculture, while UGA participants forged one of the most durable black sporting organizations in American history as they fought to join the white Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA). From George F. Grant’s invention of the golf tee in 1899 to the dominance of superstar Tiger Woods in the 1990s, this revelatory and comprehensive work challenges stereotypes and indeed the fundamental story of race and golf in American culture.