Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Exporting American Dreams -- Out in Paperback

My book Exporting American Dreams:  Thurgood Marshall's African Journey, has just been released in a new paperback edition, with a new afterword, by Princeton University Press.  Here's the book description:
Mary Dudziak's Exporting American Dreams tells the little-known story of Thurgood Marshall's work with Kenyan leaders as they fought with the British for independence in the early 1960s. Not long after he led the legal team in Brown v. Board of Education, Marshall aided Kenya's constitutional negotiations, as adversaries battled over rights and land--not with weapons, but with legal arguments. Set in the context of Marshall's civil rights work in the United States, this transnational history sheds light on legal reform and social change in the midst of violent upheavals in Africa and America. While the struggle for rights on both continents played out on a global stage, it was a deeply personal journey for Marshall. Even as his belief in the equalizing power of law was challenged during his career as a Supreme Court justice, and in Kenya the new government sacrificed the rights he cherished, Kenya's founding moment remained for him a time and place when all things had seemed possible.
And excerpts from a couple of reviews:
[A] work for the ages. Dudziak's Exporting American Dreams creatively juxtaposes the African American struggle for equality in law with the Kenyan struggle for political independence from white British colonial rule. . . . Dudziak casts Marshall as a bridge between two epochal quests for human dignity, drawing painful parallels. -- Makau Mutua, Human Rights Quarterly

[A] thought provoking and painstakingly researched journey through a crucial transformational moment in two nations' histories. . . . [W]e are invited to reflect on the potentials and core limits on liberalism, democracy, and law as paths to transformation and justice. -- Julie Novkov, Law and Politics Book Review