Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have to admit that I was skeptical of such a book and didn't believe it would teach me much that I didn't already know. I have a pretty good background in history, especially western civilization, from classical Greece to modern U.S. history. I have been a skeptic on the subject of race almost since I left high school. But Nell Painter won me over almost from the first page of this remarkable book. She did her homework, and she knows how to tell a story. She shows that notions of race are both ancient and also socially and culturally constructed. She also reveals how this conception of a "white" race emerges and becomes so important in Europe and the U.S. She reveals the silliness of race science but also places it in historical context that helps readers understand why otherwise intelligent individuals might be seduced by such notions as skull measurements, cranial capacity, skin tone, facial features, intellectual capacities, etc. She demonstrates how famous and respected figures likeThomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson were seduces by a common desperate desire to be on the superior side of a perceived "racial" and class divide, and how someone like Franz Boas could stray from the received opinions of his day when the evidence became less and less convincing. In short, the book is an education in a subject that many of us thought we knew something about. This really is a fresh look at race and notions of "whiteness" that deserves a wide audience, and it looks like that's what's happening. First you have to understand how something came about before you can really see how truly disturbing and misguided it is. She might have called her book the myth of white people, but that would have given away too much of the payoff of discovering all the foolishness that lies behind the very conception of a "white" race of humans.