Michael K. Brown, Martin Carnoy, Elliott Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie M. Shultz, and David Wellman, Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-blind Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 349 pages, ISBN 0-520-23706-4, $27.50.

Paul M. Sniderman and Thomas Piazza, Black Pride and Black Prejudice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, 192 pages, ISBN 0-691-09261-3, $24.95.

These two texts represent a somewhat unlikely pairing. What could an empirically detailed but wide-ranging, really indignant indictment of new right-wing homilies about racial politics—that's Whitewashing Race—have in common with what inquiring minds want to know about Black Pride and Black Prejudice, a carefully stepping report of results mostly from a 1997 survey, posing and answering such questions as whether African Americans share the “larger culture's” values, succumb to conspiratorial thinking, or are anti-Semitic? At the level of pure geography trivia, it so happens that all of the authors involved in generating these new books have some claim to Northern California roots or associations. But beyond that, do they have anything in common?

Richard Alba and Victor Nee, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003, 359 pages, ISBN: 067401040X, $59.95.

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, 306 pages, ISBN: 0674007328, $42.00.

Tali Mendelberg, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, 307 pages, ISBN 0-691-07071-7, $62.50.

Taeku Lee, Mobilizing Public Opinion: Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes in the Civil Rights Era. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, 293 pages, ISBN 0-226-47024-5, $55.00.

Carol M. Swain, The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 526 pages, ISBN 0-521-80886-3, $30.00.

Paul M. Kellstedt, The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 174 pages, ISBN 0-521-82171-1, $60.00.

Carol M. Swain's book, The New White Nationalism in American: Its Challenge to Integration, is an ambitious and, in many ways, novel blend of traditional social science and social advocacy. At the outset, Swain informs the reader that this book breaks with “… the tradition of impersonal, value-free social science insofar as I do not pretend to be neutral and do not hesitate to interject many personal observations and comments into the body of the text.” She does not disappoint on this score. This nearly 500-page book combines original interviews and survey and focus group data, with Swain's reflections on a range of topics including reparations, affirmative action, racial hate crimes, and the redemptive power of religion. To Swain's credit, she also steps outside her role as a (nominally) dispassionate social scientist to offer a range of policy prescriptions near the end of her book to combat what she views as the potentially alarming growth of the White power movement. In many ways, Swain's passion for her subject is refreshing, and even commendable. Unfortunately, her passion is also the source of the principal weakness of this book: its inability to match its uncompromising rhetoric with persuasive, or even plausible, supportive evidence for readers who do not already agree with her arguments.

John L. Jackson, Jr., Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001, 285 pages, ISBN 0-226-38998-7, $30.00.

Omar M. McRoberts, Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Neighborhood. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003, 178 pages, ISBN 0-226-56216-6, $25.00.

Katherine S. Newman, A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City. New York: The New Press, 2003, 306 pages, ISBN 1-56584-615-X, $26.95.