Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness New Press, 2010
While racial justice advocates focus on affirmative action, millions of African Americans have lost their basic civil rights -- the right to vote, to have access to housing and education -- through the penal system. In a powerful new book, litigator Michelle Alexander argues that the mass incarceration of people of color in this country is a system of social control, similar to Jim Crow segregation, and that a widespread movement is needed to overturn it. (Encore presentation.)

