Description: On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, assassination, his political thought remains underappreciated. Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry, along with a cast of distinguished contributors, engage critically with King's understudied writings on a wide range of compelling, challenging topics and rethink the legacy of this towering figure.
Brief description: Brandon M. Terry is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and Codirector of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. He is the coeditor, with Tommie Shelby, of To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and editor of Fifty Years Since MLK.
Review Quotes: To Shape a New World is a milestone in the study of Martin Luther King, Jr., essentially a sanctified figure in American life, whose actual ideas are rarely interrogated in any depth, either in the public realm or in academic circles. What makes this volume particularly striking is the exceptionally high quality of the essays, which are analytically rigorous, impressively researched, and often profoundly original. They highlight the limits of common narratives about King and the civil rights movement, showing the shifts in his own thinking and the unconventional nature of many of his arguments. This is a path-breaking book.--Aziz Rana, Cornell University