Since his contract as a senior news analyst at NPR was terminated in October, Juan Williams has found no shortage of platforms from which he can express himself. In addition to the new contract he signed with the Fox News Channel, amid a dispute over remarks he made on “The O’Reilly Factor,” he has now entered into a two-book deal with the Crown Publishers imprint of the Crown Publishing Group at Random House, the imprint said on Tuesday. Crown said in a statement that the first book from Mr. Williams, planned for a summer publication and not yet titled, will “focus on free speech and the growing difficulty in America of speaking out on sensitive topics.” In the book Mr. Williams “will argue that the American public benefits from a vigorous and full-throated debate on hot button issues of political and cultural import” and “chronicle his own first-hand experience of the consequences of crossing the line in public expression,” the statement said.
Read that NYT article here. See also:
Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary
,
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (African American History (Penguin))
,
My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience (AARP)
Twenty-four years ago, Juan Williams wrote Eyes on the Prize, a companion volume to the documentary history of the civil rights movement. The book, like the series, focused on the movement's leaders. But it also explored white America's difficulty in absorbing racial integration. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy struggled to reconcile the truth of the movement's principles with the challenge of holding the country together. Martin Luther King Jr. wrestled with Fannie Lou Hamer over the wisdom of compromising with the Democratic Party. When the Little Rock Nine walked into Central High School, onlookers shrieked and wept. It was a long, slow story of fear, debate, and transcendence. This is how we must understand what's happening today with American Muslims. There are obvious differences: Muslim terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11. But millions of American Muslims who had nothing to do with those attacks, other than losing loved ones in them, are now paying the price in fear and suspicion. And this compounds the difficulty that Muslims, like immigrants and minority religions of previous generations, face in gaining acceptance. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released last month, Americans expressed a net unfavorable opinion of Islam (49 percent unfavorable to 37 percent favorable), and two-thirds opposed the construction of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero.
Read the full Slate piece here. See also:
This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience
,
Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It
,
Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary
