To Shape a New World
- Author Tommie Shelby, Brandon M. Terry
- Narrator various
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Run Time 16 hours and 25 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Ethics and moral philosophy, Ethnic studies, Human rights, civil rights, Literature: history and criticism, Political science and theory, Social and political philosophy.
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What to expect
Martin Luther King Jr. may be America’s most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. On the fiftieth anniversary of King’s assassination, the man and his activism are as close to public consciousness as ever. But despite his stature, the significance of King’s writings and political thought remains underappreciated.
In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry write that the marginalization of King’s ideas reflects a romantic, consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative―an effort not at radical reform but at “living up to” enduring ideals laid down by the nation’s founders. On this view, King marshaled lofty rhetoric to help redeem the ideas of universal (white) heroes, but produced little original thought. This failure to engage deeply and honestly with King’s writings allows him to be conscripted into political projects he would not endorse, including the pernicious form of “color blindness” that insists, amid glaring race-based injustice, that racism has been overcome.
Cornel West, Danielle Allen, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Gooding-Williams, and other authors join Shelby and Terry in careful, critical engagement with King’s understudied writings on labor and welfare rights, voting rights, racism, civil disobedience, nonviolence, economic inequality, poverty, love, just-war theory, virtue ethics, political theology, imperialism, nationalism, reparations, and social justice. In King’s exciting and learned work, the authors find an array of compelling challenges to some of the most pressing political dilemmas of our present, and rethink the legacy of this towering figure.
Critics Review
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“While his birthday has become a national holiday and schoolchildren across the nation and the world know the words of his most famous speeches, there are still many aspects of his life and work that remain lesser known.”
Time -
“A compelling work of philosophy, all the more so because it treats King seriously without inoculating him from the kind of critique important to both his theory and practice.”
Los Angeles Review of Books -
“Fascinating and instructive…King’s philosophy, speaking to us through the written word, may turn out to constitute his most enduring legacy.”
New York Review of Books -
“Demonstrates…the continued and vital importance of [King’s] thinking.”
Publishers Weekly -
“With critical authors and talented narrators, this anthology explores the philosophical underpinnings of Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s, work…No singular narrator steals the show, but, rather, each is well paired with the essays that they deliver. All the narrators shy away from trying to emulate King’s speaking style and focus more on giving appropriate weight to the words being quoted. With such critical thinkers as Cornel West and Martha Nussbaum, this anthology contributes a meaningful discussion on how King’s aspirations for undoing the harm of racism continue and where the struggle still remains.”
AudioFile -
“To Shape a New World firmly situates Dr. King in the canon of American political thought.”
Eddie S. Glaude, Princeton University
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