A sweeping look into interracial friendship's significance in American democracy from the founding to the present. The oppression of Blacks is America's original sin-a sin that took root in 1619 and plagues the country to this day. Yet there have been instances of interracial bonding and friendship even in the worst of times. In Stars and Shadows - a term taken from Huckleberry Finn - Saladin Ambar analyzes two centuries of noteworthy interracial friendships that served as windows into the state of race relations in the US and, more often than not, as models for advancing the cause of racial equality. Stars and Shadows is the first work in American political history to offer a comprehensive overview of how friendship has come to shape the possibilities for democratic politics in America. Covering ten cases - from Benjamin Banneker and Thomas Jefferson's ill-fated effort to navigate the limits imposed on democracy by slavery and white supremacy, to the more hopeful stories of James Baldwin and Marlon Brando as well as Angela Davis and Gloria Steinem - Ambar's study illuminates how friendship is critical to understanding the potential for multiracial democracy. Political leaders and cultural figures are frequently involved in translating private feelings, relationships, and ideas, into a public ideal. Friendships and their meaning are therefore a significant part of any effort to shape public or elite opinion. The symbolism inherent in interracial friendship has always been readily apparent, down to the powerful example of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who were not only allied politicians, but most importantly, friends. Ambar weaves a set of interlocking stories that help create a working theory of multiracial democracy that demands more of us as citizens: a commitment to engage one another and to engage our past with even greater courage and trust. Such gestures are a vital part of the story of how race and America have been shaped. Stars and Shadows helps explain America's enduring difficulty in making friends of citizens across the color line - and why the narrative of racial friendship matters.

In 1964 Malcolm X was invited to debate at the Oxford Union Society at Oxford University. The topic of debate that evening was the infamous phrase from Barry Goldwater's 1964 Republican Convention speech:"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." At a time when Malcolm was traveling widely and advocating on behalf of blacks in America and other nations, his thirty minute speech at the Oxford Union stands out as one of the great addresses of the civil rights era. Delivered just months before his assassination, the speech followed a period in which Malcolm had traveled throughout Africa and much of the Muslim world. The journey broadened his political thought to encompass decolonization, the revolutions underway in the developing world, and the relationship between American blacks and non-white populations across the globe-including England. Facing off against debaters in one of world's most elite institutions, he delivered a revolutionary message that tackled a staggering array of issues: the nature of national identity; US foreign policy in the developing world; racial politics at home; the experiences of black immigrants in England; and the nature of power in the contemporary world. It represents a moment when his thought had advanced to its furthest point, shedding the parochial concerns of previous years for an increasingly global and humanist approach to ushering in social change. Set to publish near the fiftieth anniversary of his death, Malcolm X at Oxford Union will reshape our understanding not only of the man himself, but world politics both then and now.

Filling in the missing spaces left by traditional textbooks on American political thought, Reconsidering American Political Thought uses race, gender, and ethnicity as a lens through which to engage ongoing debates on American values and intellectual traditions. Weaving document-based texts analysis with short excerpts from classics in American literature, this book presents a re-examination of the political and intellectual debates of consequence throughout American history. Purposely beginning the story in 1619, Saladin Ambar reassesses the religious, political, and social histories of the colonial period in American history. Thereafter, Ambar moves through the story of America, with each chapter focusing on a different era in American history up to the present day. Ambar threads together analysis of periods including Thomas Jefferson's aspiration to create an "Empire of Liberty," the ethnic, racial, and gender-based discourse instrumental in creating a "Yankee" industrial state between 1877 and 1932, and the intellectual, cultural, and social forces that led to the political rise of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama in recent decades. In closing, Ambar assesses the prospects for a new, more invigorated political thought and discourse to reshape and redirect national energies and identity in the Trump presidency. Reconsidering American Political Thought presents a broad and subjective view about critical arguments in American political thought, giving future generations of students and lecturers alike an inclusive understanding of how to teach, research, study, and think about American political thought.

Mario Cuomo is in many respects one of the most significant liberal politicians in the postwar era: a three-term governor of one the nation's largest states and an eloquent defender of the Democratic Party's progressive legacy during a period of conservative ascendancy. Yet in other respects he never lived up to his supporters' hopes. His gubernatorial record was spotty, and when he had the chance to seek the presidency, he equivocated, Hamlet-like, before deciding against it and crushing the hopes of the party's progressive wing. His mixed record has made it very difficult for scholars and biographers to clarify his legacy. Was he a symbol of liberalism's long decline in twentieth-century American politics, or was he a prophet in the wilderness, heralding the rise of a new progressivism? Saladin Ambar's American Cicero weaves elements of biography, political history, and political theory into a novel interpretation of Cuomo's life and legacy. Tracing his life from the streets of an immigrant neighborhood in Queens to his final years in Albany, Ambar argues that Cuomo kept the spent embers of liberalism alive in an era when it seemed that conservatism was approaching full-spectrum dominance-even within the Democratic Party itself. In a series of important speeches over the course of the 1980s, Cuomo drew upon his singular oratorical powers to offer a progressive vision that revived and expanded upon the policymaking legacy of the New Deal and Great Society. At a time when pessimism about presidential electoral prospects reigned in the Democratic Party, his voice-buttressed by a string of electoral victories in New York-provided succor to the liberal faithful. Unsurprisingly, party professionals saw him as the next great Democratic presidential candidate. Yet when he had the chance to run-in 1988 and 1992-he decided not to. His political career ended in 1994, when he was voted out of office in New York in a nationwide Republican wave. To explain puzzling Cuomo's career trajectory, American Cicero begins with his background in New York City politics before shifting to his record as governor and his forays into presidential politics. Ambar traveled to Italy in search of answers to lingering questions about Cuomo, chiefly why he never ran for president. Conversations in Cuomo's ancestral land revealed concerns about an assassination attempt-his mother admonished him, "remember what happened to the last Catholic president"-and even proto-"birther" rumors that Cuomo had been born in Italy. Whatever clenched his decision not to run, Cuomo was nevertheless the nation's most articulate advocate for a progressive agenda at liberalism's ebb tide. His vision has had a measurable impact on twenty-first century Democratic progressives, most notably Barack Obama. American Cicero promises to not only re-establish Cuomo's central place in modern American liberalism, but also force readers to reassess liberalism's fortunes following the close of the New Deal era.

Filling in the missing spaces left by traditional textbooks on American political thought, Reconsidering American Political Thought uses race, gender, and ethnicity as a lens through which to engage ongoing debates on American values and intellectual traditions. Weaving document-based texts analysis with short excerpts from classics in American literature, this book presents a re-examination of the political and intellectual debates of consequence throughout American history. Purposely beginning the story in 1619, Saladin Ambar reassesses the religious, political, and social histories of the colonial period in American history. Thereafter, Ambar moves through the story of America, with each chapter focusing on a different era in American history up to the present day. Ambar threads together analysis of periods including Thomas Jefferson's aspiration to create an "Empire of Liberty," the ethnic, racial, and gender-based discourse instrumental in creating a "Yankee" industrial state between 1877 and 1932, and the intellectual, cultural, and social forces that led to the political rise of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama in recent decades. In closing, Ambar assesses the prospects for a new, more invigorated political thought and discourse to reshape and redirect national energies and identity in the Trump presidency. Reconsidering American Political Thought presents a broad and subjective view about critical arguments in American political thought, giving future generations of students and lecturers alike an inclusive understanding of how to teach, research, study, and think about American political thought.