Nobel Prize winner Gunnar Myrdal is best known for his book "An American Dilemma," a classic study of America's racial problems that was chosen as one of The Modern Library's top 100 nonfiction books of the twentieth century. "The Essential Gunnar Myrdal" covers the full range of Myrdal's writing, much of which has never been published in book form. It includes his early essays on economics, his thoughts on the population explosion, his discussions of the question of value in the social sciences, and excerpts from "Asian Drama," his monumental study of the development of Asia. The newest edition in The New Press's Essential series, the book includes extensive commentary by the editors as well as an introduction by Sissela Bok, who is Myrdal's daughter and author of the acclaimed "Lying and Secrets."

Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma (1944) influenced the attitudes of a generation of Americans on the race issue and established Myrdal as a major critic of American politics and culture. Walter Jackson explores how the Swedish Social Democratic scholar, policymaker, and activist came to shape a consensus on one of America's most explosive public issues.

Nobel Prize winner Gunnar Myrdal is best known for his book An American Dilemma, a classic study of America's racial problems that was chosen as one of The Modern Library's top 100 nonfiction books of the twentieth century. The Essential Gunnar Myrdal covers the full range of Myrdal's writing, much of which has never been published in book form. It includes his early essays on economics, his thoughts on the population explosion, his discussions of the question of value in the social sciences, and excerpts from Asian Drama, his monumental study of the development of Asia. The newest edition in The New Press's Essential series, the book includes extensive commentary by the editors as well as an introduction by Sissela Bok, who is Myrdal's daughter and author of the acclaimed Lying and Secrets.

Since its publication in 1944, many Americans have described Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma as a defining text on U.S. race relations. Here, Maribel Morey confirms with historical evidence what many critics of the book have suspected: An American Dilemma was not commissioned, funded, or written with the goal of challenging white supremacy. Instead, Morey reveals it was commissioned by Carnegie Corporation president Frederick Keppel, and researched and written by Myrdal, with the intent of solidifying white rule over Black people in the United States. Morey details the complex global origins of An American Dilemma, illustrating its links to Carnegie Corporation's funding of social science research meant to help white policymakers in the Anglo-American world address perceived problems in their governance of Black people. Morey also unpacks the text itself, arguing that Myrdal ultimately complemented his funder's intentions for the project by keeping white Americans as his principal audience and guiding them towards a national policy program on Black Americans that would keep intact white domination. Because for Myrdal and Carnegie Corporation alike, international order rested on white Anglo-Americans' continued ability to dominate effectively.

An unprecedented examination of how news stories, editorials and photographs in the American press—and the journalists responsible for them—profoundly changed the nation’s thinking about civil rights in the South during the 1950s and ‘60s. Roberts and Klibanoff draw on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen—black and white—revealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings that compelled its citizens to act. Meticulously researched and vividly rendered, The Race Beat is an extraordinary account of one of the most calamitous periods in our nation’s history, as told by those who covered it.

Bringing together the classic statements on social stratification, this collection offers the most significant contributions to ongoing debates on the nature of race, class, and gender inequality.