The Career of a Textbook

For an essay on Obama's syllabus for his "current issues in racism and the law" class that Stacey Gahagan and I are writing, I've been going through the six editions of Derrick Bell's Race, Racism, and American Law.  They span 1973 to 2008.  A lot of books that go through multiple editions keep pretty much the same structure and set of ideas; Bell's is somewhat different in this regard because its life covers so much growth in scholarship and such extraordinary revolutions in law, too.  It's really interesting to see the growth of the book and how Bell adds his own thoughts and scholarship over time.  Though I must say that one of our themes is how much Obama's syllabus differs from Bell's ideas.  Anyway, as I was in the library the other day I thought a picture of the whole run of the books would be nice -- and it was only after I took the picture that I realized that a series of books on reparations are right next to Bell's Race, Racism, and American Law on the shelf, including a book I like a great deal!