Judge Andrew Napolitano has a new book coming out on America’s treatment of citizens according to race. While claiming all are created equal, over the years they have rejected that idea deliberately. It’s called Dred Scott’s Revenge.

“The real culprit throughout our racial history has been the government,” writes Napolitano. “At every level, at virtually every turn, in every generation, the government selectively chose to enact and enforce laws and inevitably condoned and protected the most horrific abuse imaginable to blacks, and to some of the whites who protested.”

I know you’ve waiting for that perfect way to use your crock-pot to make Overnight Oatmeal with Cinnamon and Bananas, and now the Slow & Easy cookbook for slow cookers has it for you. The Al Dente blog reviews it. “If you’re looking for a book where every recipe doesn’t involve a can of cream soup, you’re in luck! The recipes here are by nature simple–few ingredients, not many steps–but they also make use of basics from your produce and meat departments instead of prepacked, premade foods you just dump in the pot.”

Enjoy.

A famous explorer, author, and geologist Clarence King (1842-1901), a white man, presented himself as a black railroad worker named James Todd in order to marry Ada Copeland. No one knew that the well-known and respected white explorer was also an unknown and married black man, not even his wife, until he died. The story is told in Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line by Martha Sandweiss.

Reviewer Elinore Longobardi writes:

Sure, Clarence King was a public figure with a generous paper trail, but what of James Todd? The great care King took to obscure that part of his life reverberates down the years, so that even an assiduous researcher (take a look at the rigorous footnotes) finds only small shards of information.

And so Passing Strange is dotted with lacunae, many of them marked with such phrases as, “No anecdotal stories from Ada’s own childhood survive,” or “It is not entirely clear just how Clarence King’s double life began.” …

The larger point, though, is that society, and thus history, values certain lives over others. Some are chronicled in newspapers, biographies, and archives; others pass into obscurity. The challenge to the present-day historian is to resurrect as much as possible of those rich, yet undervalued lives—and in Passing Strange, Sandweiss more than rises to the challenge.

Hugh Hewitt recommends, Work Hard, Be Nice, by Jay Mathews, saying it’s the best on teaching in America.

At first glance, I thought this book by Robert Kaiser was about the “stimulus” bill in congress, but I see it’s about the election process. The title and cover say it all.