Midway through Washington Post columnist Asim's history of the "N" word in America, readers may conclude it should not be uttered by anyone, anymore, for any reason. Essentially, this 400-year chronology is an exhaustive history of white supremacist ideology, showing that the word nigger is as American as "liberty, freedom, justice and equality." He sweeps over this sensitive and contradictory terrain including black Americans' use of the word with practicality, while dispensing gentle provocations. Asim notes, for example, that popular civil rights presidents like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson used the N word all the time. Bicycling in Africa in 2004, a young black American encounters a black-owned hip-hop clothing store called "Niggers." Children growing up during the latter half of the 19th century sang "The Ten Little Niggers" nursery rhyme. Asim is at his best when offering his opinion "in the 21st century, to subsist on our former masters' cast-off language... strikes me as... an immense, inscrutable, and bizarre failure of the imagination." Still, he concludes, the word nigger is indispensable in certain endeavors. His analysis of 19th- and 20th-century pop culture phenomena may too fine-toothed for general readers, but clear, engaging writing increases the pleasure. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Asim's subtitle is misleading. This book is not so much a polemic about appropriate speech behavior as it is an historical account. Asim (editor, Washington Post Book World) offers a detailed survey of representations of African Americans in popular culture and civil society from the Revolutionary War era to the present, with particular attention to the use of the word nigger, its meanings, and its effect on listeners and readers. This careful social history is what sets the book apart, especially from Randall Scott's excellent Nigger, which used a history of the word in law and litigation to build an ethical framework for determining who may use it and when. Asim builds a similar framework, but his conclusion that an understanding of the history of the "n" word is required for anyone hoping to employ the word legitimately is not his most vivid point. He is most eloquent when relating how African Americans have been characterized in our culture; how the word nigger has been employed to oppress, belittle, dismiss, humiliate, and ridicule black people; and how they themselves have increasingly used it to satirize and oppose that oppression. Recommended for public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/06.] Emily-Jane Dawson, Multnomah Cty. Lib., Portland, OR Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Asim addresses the root of this controversial word in American rhetoric and contemporary experience. Just as our founding fathers tried to dodge the issue of race and slavery by only hinting around it, the current debate often suggests that by not using the N word, the race issues will remain dormant. Asim looks back at Thomas Jefferson's essays on slavery, his justification of the misuse of slaves on pseudoscientific bases, and continued denigration of blacks in word and deed. He traces the use of the word through popular entertainment from minstrel shows to films (notably Birth of a Nation) to current comedy routines and rap music. Despite attempts by hip-hop culture to reverse the impact of the word, and remove the sting of racial hurt, the result has been to maintain socioeconomic distance among the races, Asim maintains. Still, he argues that the word has had a long history of powerful impact in more responsible hands as a reminder of the troubled legacy of race relations in the U.S. VernonFord. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Introduction
Part I Birth of a Notion: 1619-1799
1 Founding Fictions	9
2 Niggerology
Part 1 20
Part II The Progress of Prejudice: 1800-1857
3 No Place to Be Somebody	33
4 Niggerology
Part 2 44
5 Life Among the Lowly	55
6 Jim Crow and Company	72
Part III Dreams Deferred: 1858-1896
7 The World the War Made	85 N
8 Nigger Happy	99
Part IV Separate and Unequal: 1897-1954
9 Different Times	119
10 From House Nigger to Niggerati	128
11 Bad Niggers	150
Part V Progress and Paradox: 1955-Present
12 Violence and Vehemence	163
13 To Slur with Love	172
14 What's in a Name?	196
15 Nigger vs Nigga	212
Epilogue	235
Notes	243
Selected Bibliography	258
Index	263

Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.