State and local policies are key to understanding how to reduce prison populations. This anthology of critical and personal essays about the need to reform criminal justice policies that have led to mass incarceration provides a national perspective while remaining grounded in Michigan. Major components in this volume include a focus on current research on the impact of incarceration on minority groups, youth, and the mentally ill; and a focus on research on Michigan’s leadership in the area of reentry. Changes in policy will require a change in the public’s problematic images of incarcerated people. In this volume, academic research is combined with first-person narratives and paintings from people who have been directly affected by incarceration to allow readers to form more personal connections with those who face incarceration. At a time when much of the push to reduce prison populations is focused on the financial cost to states and cities, this book emphasizes the broader social and human costs of mass incarceration.

The provocative debate about Malcolm X’s legacy that emerged after the publication of Manning Marable’s 2011 biography raised critical questions about the revolutionary Black Nationalist’s importance to American and world affairs: What was Malcolm’s association with the Nation of Islam? How should we interpret Malcolm’s discourses? Was Malcolm antifeminist? What is Malcolm’s legacy in contemporary public affairs? How do Malcolm’s early childhood experiences in Michigan shape and inform his worldview? Was Malcolm trending toward socialism during his final year? Malcolm X’s Michigan Worldview responds to these questions by presenting Malcolm’s subject as an iconography used to deepen understanding of African descendent peoples’ experiences through advanced research and disciplinary study. A Black studies reader that uses the biography of Malcolm X both to interrogate key aspects of the Black world experience and to contribute to the intellectual expansion of the discipline, the book presents Malcolm as a Black subject who represents, symbolizes, and associates meaning with the Black/Africana studies discipline. Through a range of multidisciplinary prisms and themes including discourse, race, culture, religion, gender, politics, and community, this rich volume elicits insights about the Malcolm iconography that contribute to the continuous formulation, deepening, and strengthening of the Black studies discipline.

The terrorist attacks against U.S. targets on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, sparked an intense debate about "human rights." According to contributors to this provocative book, the discussion of human rights to date has been far too narrow. They argue that any conversation about human rights in the United States must include equal rights for all residents.
     Essays examine the historical and intellectual context for the modern debate about human rights, the racial implications of the war on terrorism, the intersection of racial oppression, and the national security state. Others look at the Pinkerton detective agency as a forerunner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the role of Africa in post–World War II American attempts at empire-building, and the role of immigration as a human rights issue.