Books, Arts & Manners

The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration & How It Changed America, by Nicholas Lemann (Knopf, 410 pp., $24.95)

NICHOLAS LEMANN’s powerful book might well prove a momentous event in the evolution of modern liberalism. Just when it seems that most of America, and even most of liberal America, has resigned itself to the hopelessness of the situation of the urban black poor, Lemann has set himself the task of rousing the country to anger about it. But he is attempting to ignite this anger in a curious —and curiously hopeful—way: by representing the urban black poor as immigrants much like the immigrants who filled America’s cities in the past.

DF

About the Author

David Frum

Featured Tags

The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration & How It Changed America, by Nicholas Lemann (Knopf, 410 pp., $24.95)

NICHOLAS LEMANN’s powerful book might well prove a momentous event in the evolution of modern liberalism. Just when it seems that most of America, and even most of liberal America, has resigned itself to the hopelessness of the situation of the urban black poor, Lemann has set himself the task of rousing the country to anger about it. But he is attempting to ignite this anger in a curious —and curiously hopeful—way: by representing the urban black poor as immigrants much like the immigrants who filled America’s cities in the past.