num_pages: 512
description: A mind-expanding and myth-destroying exploration of whitenessan illuminating work on the history of race and power. Eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter tells perhaps the most important forgotten story in American history. Beginning at the roots of Western civilization she traces the invention of the idea of a white raceoften for economic scientific and political ends. She shows how the origins of American identity in the eighteenth century were intrinsically tied to the elevation of white skin into the embodiment of beauty power and intelligence; how the great American intellectuals including Ralph Waldo Emersoninsisted that only Anglo Saxons were truly American; and how the definitions of who is white and who is American have evolved over time. A story filled with towering historical figures The History of White People closes an enormous gap in a literature that has long focused on the nonwhite and it forcefully reminds us that the concept of race is an all-too-human invention whose meaning importance and reality have changed according to a long and rich history. 70 illustrations.
language: English
title: The History of White People
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company