Ask the Author: Steve Luxenberg
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Steve Luxenberg
Pleased to say that my second nonfiction book will be published in February 2019 by W.W. Norton. The title is "Separate: A Story of Race, Resistance, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation." In 2016, it won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, honoring excellence in nonfiction.
Here's a bit about the book: Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court case synonymous with “separate but equal,” drew remarkably little attention when the justices announced their decision on May 1896. Yet it is one of the most compelling and dramatic stories of the nineteenth century.
Told through the eyes of the people caught up in the case—the New Orleans resisters who brought it, the best-selling author recruited to argue it, the Supreme Court justices who heard it—"Separate" snakes its way through a half-century of American history, beginning at the dawn of the railroad age, when passengers found themselves asking a new question: Where do I sit?
Many of the book's underlying themes resonate with issues alive today. The Lukas judges said this in making their award: " 'Separate" is a rich, complex, and all too human story, replete with ironies and unintended consequences. This is 'big history,' deeply researched and well told."
Now, two years later, the manuscript has gone from "in progress" to "finished." I hope the completed work lives up to their advance praise!
Here's a bit about the book: Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court case synonymous with “separate but equal,” drew remarkably little attention when the justices announced their decision on May 1896. Yet it is one of the most compelling and dramatic stories of the nineteenth century.
Told through the eyes of the people caught up in the case—the New Orleans resisters who brought it, the best-selling author recruited to argue it, the Supreme Court justices who heard it—"Separate" snakes its way through a half-century of American history, beginning at the dawn of the railroad age, when passengers found themselves asking a new question: Where do I sit?
Many of the book's underlying themes resonate with issues alive today. The Lukas judges said this in making their award: " 'Separate" is a rich, complex, and all too human story, replete with ironies and unintended consequences. This is 'big history,' deeply researched and well told."
Now, two years later, the manuscript has gone from "in progress" to "finished." I hope the completed work lives up to their advance praise!
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