… is a slim volume for $24.99. The description on inside front dust jacket concludes it “may well be the most important book dealing with race to be published in recent decades.” That strikes me as presumptuous. The front matter includes a list of the author’s other titles, from which it appears he seldom writes about anything else.

Yet the portions I browsed remind me of something I want to do on my own show. The preface examines in some detail changes in public opinion polls between 2008 and 2010. I don’t attach the weight to these facts that Cose does. But if, for example, the President’s approval rating rises with one group and falls with another group in the same time frame, I would like to find out from listeners whose opinions changed and why; to examine with listeners how their thinking works, and on what bases their opinions change.

(Originally posted 05/12/12 at Trojan Horse Productions.  Reposted 01/22/14.)