The Preacher and the Politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and Race in America

Walker (history, U. of California-Davis) offers a historical perspective on race, religion, sexuality, and politics in the 2008 presidential election that he finds missing from other commentary. He argues that Wright is not the lunatic the hard right makes him out to be, but heir to an American tradition of preaching that goes back to the Puritans. Then he explores Obama's mixed-race heritage and his place in American political history since Reconstruction during the 1860s-70s, and concludes with a look at black Christianity in the lives of African Americans. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Clarence E. Walker, Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, is the author ofMongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings and We Can’t Go Home Again: An Argument about Afrocentrism. Gregory D. Smithers, author ofScience, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780s-1890s, is Lecturer in American History at King’s College, University of Aberdeen in Scotland.