The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960-1972
Graham (history, Univ. of Maryland) has taken a unique approach to the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. He has eschewed the dramatic--protests, violence--to focus on "the obscure and complex phase of implementation" of laws. This work, then, becomes the first administrative history of this movement. Central to Graham's approach is a clear sense of irony, as he traces a tortuous bureaucratic path. What began in the early 1960s as "negative" laws and regulations to protect blacks from discrimination became in the 1970s affirmative action decisions, which included women as well as blacks. The book is a major milestone in the study of recent American life and politics. Given its thoroughness and complexity, it will be most useful for experts in the field.- Anthony O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.