Bloom Joshua - Black against empire: the history and politics of the Black Panther Party, with a new preface

Praise for Black against Empire

There have been at least a half dozen books and films by former Panthers, or about them, over the last decade. Black against Empire, however, is unique among them in the scope and depth of its scholarship.

Hctor Tobar, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Vivid renderings of scene... make comprehensible both the movement and the times.

Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW

The first comprehensive history of the Party.

Fredrick Harris, London Review of Books

A comprehensive and compelling history of the Black Panther Party. As close to complete as one text can possibly be, it is the book I would recommend to anyone wanting to read just one book about the Black Panthers.

Ron Jacobs, CounterPunch

Twelve years of archival research helped the authors produce this first comprehensive book on the Black Panther Party, its members, its leaders, and its resistance to the politics of the American government.

Los Angeles Magazine

Lets you understand what happenedand why.

American History

Black against Empire breaks new scholarly ground in providing the first comprehensive history of the Black Panther Party.... [It] represents a significant contribution in restoring the integrity of Black Panther Party activists who fought for social justice, and shows how the history of racism in America sparked mental anguish and torment among black peoples, who resisted in the best ways they knew how.

Jeremy Kuzmarov, History News Network

A welcome addition to the literature about the Oakland-born organization that spread across the country like a prairie fire in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and that altered the consciousness of African Americans.

Jonah Raskin, San Francisco Chronicle

Immediately assumed a central and critical spot within the Panther canon.... As authoritative, respectful, and complete a record of the Black Panther Partys workings as we are likely to get.

Mark Reynolds, PopMatters

A riveting and thoughtful narrative of the Partys formation and ideational evolution.... Black against Empire is essential reading for those looking to understand the rise and fall of movements for social change.

Mary Potorti, Confluence

A bracingly narrated, voluminously researched history of the Black Panther Party. It plumbs rare archives and provides trenchant analysis of how and why the Panthers tapped the historical moment and emerged as a potent force.

Christopher D. Cook, Progressive

The first high-quality history of the Black Panther Party.... For the first time, one can read, in a single volume, a well-researched history that explains the origins of the Panthers in the context of Oakland neighborhood politics and the groups transformation into a social service organization. For that reason alone, the book will become a classic in the growing black power scholarship.

Fabio Rojas, American Historical Review

This meticulously researched history explores the combination of revolutionary commitment and historical circumstance that enabled the emergence of the Black Panther Party. Because they do not shy away from the contradictions that animated this movement, Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin pose crucial questions about the genesis, rise, and decline of the BPP that are as relevant to young generations of activists as they are to those who came of age during that era.

Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz

This is the book weve all been waiting for: the first complete history of the Black Panther Party, devoid of the hype, the nonsense, the onedimensional heroes and villains, the myths, or the tunnel vision that has limited scholarly and popular treatments across the ideological spectrum.

Robin D. G. Kelley, Gary B. Nash Professor of American History, University of California, Los Angeles

This is, by a wide margin, the most detailed, analytically sophisticated, and balanced account of the Black Panther Party yet written. Anyone who hopes to understand the group and its impact on American culture and politics will need to read this book.

Doug McAdam, Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology, Stanford University

Bloom and Martin bring to light an important chapter in American history. They carefully mine the archival data to give us an account of the rise of the Black Panther Party, of its successes, and the shoals of American politics on which it fractured.

Frances Fox Piven, President, American Sociological Association

An essential, deeply researched, and insightful studythe best so farof the complex history, inner workings, and conflicted legacy of the Black Panther Party as it waged its relentless battle for human rights and racial dignity in the streets of urban America.

Leon F. Litwack, President, Organization of American Historians

Bloom and Martin have written the first comprehensive political history of the Black Panther Party. They present an unvarnished, judicious treatment of a much-revered, much-maligned, and widely misunderstood revolutionary organization leading the charge for Black Power in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Tera Hunter, Professor of History and African American Studies, Princeton University

Through a fresh analytical framework that helps us understand the revolutionary fervor of the 1960s, Bloom and Martin make clear that the Panthers were not an aberration or figment of the popular imaginary. They were the vanguard among black people seeking a way out of nowhere.

Jane Rhodes, author of Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon

Much has been written about the Party, but Black against Empire is the definitive history of the Panthersone that helps us rethink the very meaning of a revolutionary movement.

Michael Omi, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Remarkable.... As one who lived through the Panther era, I believe this book should become a standard historical work for years to come.

Tom Hayden, author of The Port Huron Statement

Black against Empire is easily the most impressive, sweeping, and substantive scholarly history of the BPP.... Black against Empire is a masterful work. It is analytically sophisticated, superbly researched, and a fine addition to the disparate histories of the most audacious and significant black leftist group of the period.

Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Journal of American History

Impressive.... Black against Empire does a brilliant job of revealing how prominent figures in American (indeed global) public, social, and intellectual life were touched by the Partys influence.

Joyce M. Bell, Social Forces

Future historians of the Panthers and American radicalism will find Black against Empire a foundational text.

Michan Connor, Southern California Quarterly

THE GEORGE GUND FOUNDATION

IMPRINT IN AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES

The George Gund Foundation has endowed this imprint to advance understanding of the history, culture, and current issues of African Americans.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the African American Studies Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from the George Gund Foundation.