描述
开 本: 32开纸 张: 胶版纸包 装: 平装是否套装: 否国际标准书号ISBN: 9780807009574
An outspoken participant in the civil rights movement, Roger
Wilkins served as Assistant Attorney General during the Johnson
administration. In 1972 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize along
with Bernstein and Herblock for his coverage of Watergate. Yet this
black man, who has served the United States so well, feels at times
an unwelcome guest here.
In Jefferson’s Pillow, Wilkins returns to America’s beginnings
and the founding fathers who preached and fought for freedom, even
though they owned other human beings and legally denied them their
humanity. He asserts that the mythic accounts of the American
Revolution have ignored slavery and oversimplified history until
the heroes, be they the founders or the slaves in their service,
are denied any human complexity.
Wilkins offers a thoughtful analysis of this fundamental paradox
through his exploration of the lives of George Washington, George
Mason, James Madison, and of course Thomas Jefferson. He discusses
how class, education, and personality allowed for the institution
of slavery, unravels how we as Americans tell different sides of
that story, and explores the confounding ability of that narrative
to limit who we are and who we can become.
An important intellectual history of America’s founding,
Jefferson’s Pillow will change the way we view our nation and
ourselves.
An extraordinarily thoughtful and illuminating meditation on
American history. –Ira Berlin, The New York Times Book
Review
”We are obliged to judge because we are obliged to do better; to
probe the flaws of our predecessors is to engage not in vindictive
finger-pointing but to resist hubris and complacency in our own
time. Wilkins’ book has made a mirror of the past in which we
glimpse our own shortcomings -and perhaps even the means for
transcending them.” –Philip Connors, In These Times
”Wilkins makes a case for his opinions in sentences that enchant
and inform. In its persuasive blend of logic and lyricism,
Wilkins’s language at its most potent is positively . . .
Jeffersonian.” –Jabari Asim, Washington Post Book World
”With a sense of genuine curiosity Wilkins tried to avoid either
condemning the founders too easily by modern standards or excusing
too easily the contradictions of their slave ownership. Instead, by
exploring the culture and atmosphere in which they grew up, he
discovered how much slavery was an integral part of the Virginia
society that enabled the founders to create the recipe for modern
rights, equality and democracy.” –Clarence Page, Chicago
Tribune
”Wilkins, who describes himself as a ‘deeply committed American,’
is never less than a patriot here; someone indifferent about
America could not write such a thoughtful book. He demythologizes
the Founding Fathers, yet expands their greatness by placing it
within the context of the times, as well as their flawed
humanity.”–Boston Globe
”When the Founding Fathers were deciding whether to risk their
lives and fortunes for their ideals, Benjamin Franklin remarked:
‘We must all indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall
hang separately.’ In the years after their bold gamble for freedom,
the hangman’s noose played a far darker role in our republic,
becoming the lynch mob’s weapon of choice for denying
African-Americans their inalienable rights. Liberty and freedom,
repression and racism, these warring yet braided strands form the
Gordian knot of the American experience: A land of visionary light
entwined in the darkest recesses of human cruelty. Now comes Roger
Wilkins like a modern-day Alexander to cut this knot.” –J. Peder
Zane, Raleigh News and Observer
”Roger Wilkins is one of our most gifted social commentators. In
Jefferson’s Pillow, he explores with great eloquence and passion
the ultimate contradiction of our society-between being a free
American, a descendant of slavery, and the beneficiary of those who
went before him.” –David Halberstam, author of War in a Time of
Peace
评论
还没有评论。