Dear Great Book Guru, Saturday April 14 is opening day for Sea Cliff Baseball and Softball with its traditional parade down Sea Cliff Avenue.  We are great fans of the Artful Dodgers and will be cheering them on all season. When the parade is over, I would like to read a book that will help me understand some of the pressing issues of the day.  I am up for a challenge. 

Fan of the Artful Dodgers

Dear Fan of the Artful Dodgers,  This weekend I read a lengthy, disturbing history of racist ideas in American: STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING  by Ibram X.  Kendi. This National Book Award Winner traces racism in America by focusing on  five  intellectuals whose lives span colonial times  up through the present: the Puritan minister Cotton Mather; Thomas Jefferson;  fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison;  philosopher W.E.B. DuBois; and anti- prison activist Angela Davis. Kendi maintains that racist ideas were and continue to be manufactured to justify racist policy.   The title comes from a speech Jefferson Davis- future president of the Confederacy- made before the US Senate claiming that “the inequality of the races was stamped from the beginning.” A most readable and rewarding book- highly recommended!