Matthew DiBiase: National Archives; Blogger

This is a searing and unsparing history of four centuries racism against African-Americans. The result of pain-staking research, Eugene Betit chronicles with academic skill how certain factions of White America have devoted themselves for 400 years in the transportation, subjugation, marginalization, exploitation, and deliberate disenfranchisement of African-Americans; how American remains in a dark thralldom with racism and how racism still motivates our politics today–a sad reminder that in many ways America still has an enormous amount of growing up to do if we are to fulfill the spirit of the Constitution.