From the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, an unflinching, critical new look at the Second Amendment – and how it has been engineered to deny the rights of African Americans since its inception.

'A provocative look at the racial context for Americans' right to bear arms' New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice The Second Amendment: The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. Throughout history, the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States has protected the right to bear arms. For Black Americans, this has come with the understanding that the moment they exercise this right (or the moment that they don’t), their life – as surely as the lives of Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor – may be snatched away in a single, fateful second. In The Second, historian and award-winning author Carol Anderson illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment: from the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry or use a firearm, to today, where measures to expand and curtail gun ownership continue to limit the freedoms and power of Black Americans. Through compelling historical narrative merging into the unfolding events of recent years, Anderson’s investigation shows that the Second Amendment is not about guns but about anti-Blackness, revealing the magnitude of institutional racism in America today.

"A provocative look at the racial context for Americans’ right to bear arms, Anderson’s forcefully argued new book contends that the Second Amendment was inspired by “fear of Black people” - a desire to ensure that whites could suppress slave rebellions" - New York Times Book Review

"The historian Carol Anderson thinks that America’s singular relationship with guns reflects its singular history of racism . . . Anderson’s book is a bracing reminder that the defense of rights is not necessarily a liberatory project" - New Yorker

"[A] powerful indictment . . . Anderson illustrates, often in vividly disturbing detail, the brutal reprisals that have occurred whenever African Americans sought justice on this issue, and the litany of counterattacks by police, politicians, the military, and the courts cements the unassailable veracity of her argument . . . In her passion and precision, Anderson presents a uniquely positioned, persuasive and unflinching look at yet another form of deadly systemic racism in American society that has stoked the centuries-long crimes of insecurity, inequality and injustice" - Booklist

"An extraordinarily timely and urgent call to confront the legacy of structural racism" - New York Times Book Review on WHITE RAGE

"I've read a fair bit of African-American history, but White Rage, which is beautifully written and exhaustively researched, illuminated for me just how deliberately education policy in the United States disenfranchised African-Americans" - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on WHITE RAGE

"This trenchant little book will push you to think not just about the vote count but about who counts, too." - New York Times on ONE PERSON, NO VOTE

"A sobering primer on the myriad ways African American resilience and triumph over enslavement, Jim Crow and intolerance have been relentlessly defied by the very institutions entrusted to uphold our democracy." - Washington Post on WHITE RAGE