By Michelle Alexander with a new foreword by Cornel West; A New York Times Bestseller

Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the we see the world and helps to fina a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control--relegating millions to a permanent second-class status--even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorglindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action."