The History of White PeopleA New York Times bestseller: “This terrific new book . . . [explores] the ‘notion of whiteness,’ an idea as dangerous as it is seductive.”—Boston Globe Telling perhaps the most important forgotten story in American history, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, illuminating not only the invention of race but also the frequent praise of “whiteness” for economic, scientific, and political ends. A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White People closes a huge gap in literature that has long focused on the non-white and forcefully reminds us that the concept of “race” is an all-too-human invention whose meaning, importance, and reality have changed as it has been driven by a long and rich history of events. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - rivkat - LibraryThing“Whiteness” has been a European obsession for centuries, including claims about how ancient Egyptians—at least the ruling castes—were white and fair-haired (they just wore wigs in pictures, the ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - ohernaes - LibraryThingInteresting parts, like about how there used to be hard within-European white fronts that are now much less pronounced, and president Theodore Roosevelt's worries about racial decay and writings about positive eugenics (boosting fertility), but overall I found the book too long and slow. Read full review
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Bibliographic information
| Title | The History of White People |
| Author | Nell Irvin Painter |
| Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company, 2011 |
| ISBN | 039307949X, 9780393079494 |
| Length | 448 pages |
| Subjects | › History / Historiography |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |