The Cambridge Guide to African American History Available to Purchase

It is a curious fact about the USA that it celebrates the virtues of the “melting pot” and the opportunities it affords the American people (sadly more limited today than they used to be), yet Americans remain acutely conscious of racial and social divisions. There are legions of books on Jews in America – also Poles, Chinese and Japanese, Native Americans, Italian-Americans and of course African Americans. Despite the fluidity of American society, this consciousness has not “melted” with the passage of time. European countries do not record these differences to the same extent and certainly not in print.

The...