Race

On the second page of the first chapter, Reynolds immediately addresses the concept of race in a bold way, with literal bold and enlarged letters. He urges his reader to "take a deep breath" before addressing the topic, as it is "a strange and persistent poison in American history," and thus very difficult to discuss openly (2). Aside from his introductory chapter, Reynolds does not take a lot of the time of the book discussing the concept of race by itself. This is because the central point of the text is that all racial groups are equal, so there is not much to analyze about the concept of race itself. Instead, he delves into racism and racial inequality, a more practical application of the word for the sake of this historical analysis. To help his reader understand the complexity of the topic of race, Reynolds defines race as...